1 Pound The Canadian Bank of Commerce

By 1938, Canadian chartered banks were issuing their final years of private banknotes — the Bank of Canada Act of 1934 had set the process in motion, and the chartered banks lost their note-issuing rights entirely in 1950. This particular pound-denominated issue is unusual: Canadian chartered bank notes were almost universally denominated in dollars by this period, making a sterling-denominated note from 1938 almost certainly intended for use in Newfoundland, which remained a separate dominion until 1949 and where pound-based accounting was still in common use.

The Canadian Bank Note Company in Ottawa printed the bulk of late-era chartered bank issues, working from engraved plates with a consistency that makes printer-based attribution straightforward for this series.