1 Dollar/Piastre

The Union Bank of Montreal was chartered in 1865 — which makes a note attributed to it in 1838 an immediate anomaly. There were several short-lived institutions operating in Lower Canada under similar names during the rebellions period, and misattributions in early Canadian provincial banking paper are common enough that the Pick reference here warrants scrutiny before any firm provenance claim is made.

Lower Canada in 1838 was in open political crisis, with the second Patriote uprising suppressed just months prior and martial law recently lifted. Any chartered bank issuing paper in that environment did so under considerable uncertainty about whether the colony's commercial infrastructure would survive the year.