10 Dollars

The Merchants Bank of Canada was one of the older chartered banks, tracing its roots to 1861, but by the time this note was issued it was already in a weakened competitive position relative to the larger Montreal institutions. The American Bank Note Company held contracts with numerous Canadian chartered banks during this period, and the plates for many of these issues were shared or adapted across denominations with only modest modification — a cost-saving measure that occasionally produced subtle inconsistencies in the finished notes.

The bank collapsed in 1922, absorbed by the Bank of Montreal after years of mismanagement and wartime loan losses. Notes from the later years of issue are scarcer; 1906 examples predate the worst of the institutional rot.