1 Penny - Bank of Upper Canada

The Bank of Upper Canada was granted a charter in 1821 and became the dominant commercial bank in the province, closely tied to the Family Compact — the oligarchic clique that controlled Upper Canadian politics well into the 1840s. By the time these tokens were commissioned, the bank was operating in the newly united Province of Canada, yet the "Upper Canada" name persisted on the coinage as a matter of institutional branding rather than geography.

The tokens were struck in Birmingham, almost certainly by Heaton's mint, which supplied the bulk of Canadian provincial copper during this period. The bank collapsed in 1866, a casualty of overextension and the post-Confederation reorganization of Canadian finance.