1/2 Penny - George Ords Bust and Harp

George Ord was a Montreal merchant who commissioned this token privately in 1834, part of a wave of commercial copper and brass coinage that flooded Lower Canada as the colonial administration failed to supply adequate small change. The Legislative Assembly had been locked in prolonged deadlock with the appointed Executive Council — a political paralysis that among other consequences left merchants scrambling to produce their own circulating pieces. Ord's token circulated alongside dozens of similar private issues, most of them equally unofficial and equally tolerated by necessity.