1 Dollar

The Commercial Bank of Canada was chartered in Kingston, Ontario, and by 1860 was one of the more solvent of the pre-Confederation chartered banks — a distinction that would not last. It failed in 1868, one of several Upper Canadian institutions brought down by overextension and the collapse of the Bank of Upper Canada two years earlier, which triggered a regional credit crisis severe enough to shake public confidence in chartered banking across the province.

The American Bank Note Company had only recently formed through the 1858 merger of several competing New York security printers. This note falls among their earliest Canadian commissions under the consolidated imprint.