10 Piastres/Dollars

The Gore Bank was chartered in 1835 and operated out of Hamilton, Upper Canada, serving the commercial traffic along the western end of Lake Ontario. Canadian chartered banks of this period issued their own notes freely — there was no central bank, no federal currency authority, and notes from dozens of competing institutions circulated simultaneously, often at discount depending on how far from the issuing branch you were trying to spend them.

The dual denomination — piastres alongside dollars — reflects the genuinely messy monetary reality of pre-Confederation Canada, where Spanish milled dollars, Halifax currency, and American coinage all overlapped in daily commerce. One piastre was reckoned at roughly one dollar in this accounting convention.

The Gore Bank was absorbed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce in 1870.