100 Dollars

The Imperial Bank of Canada was absorbed by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in 1961, but in 1917 it was a mid-sized Toronto-chartered institution competing aggressively in western Canadian markets. High-denomination chartered bank notes of this period were primarily instruments of interbank settlement and commercial credit — a $100 note in circulation was unusual enough to attract scrutiny.

The American Bank Note Company operated a Montreal facility that handled much of its Canadian chartered bank work, keeping production domestic for customs and practical reasons. The coloured underprint was the era's standard deterrent against photo-mechanical counterfeiting, which had become a genuine threat by the mid-1910s.