100 Dollars

The Royal Bank of Canada was a chartered commercial bank, not a central bank — Canada did not establish the Bank of Canada until 1935, meaning private chartered banks were still issuing their own currency well into the 1930s. This note falls within that final window of chartered bank issue, printed by the Canadian Bank Note Company in Ottawa under longstanding contracts that gave CBNC a near-monopoly on Canadian chartered bank work throughout the early twentieth century.

At the $100 denomination, circulation was always limited to commercial and interbank transactions. Few would have passed through ordinary retail hands, which partly accounts for why surviving examples vary so sharply in condition.