20 Cents - C. Verreault Petroleum La Baie, Quebec

A Depression-era-style merchant scrip issued not during the Depression but almost certainly in the 1970s or 1980s, when Quebec saw a minor revival of private trade tokens and promotional paper as small businesses sought customer loyalty mechanisms outside the banking system. Improthèque Inc. was a Quebec City commercial printer with no specialization in security printing, which shows — these notes carry no anti-counterfeiting features beyond the signature of Christian Verreault himself.

La Baie is a former industrial municipality on the Saguenay fjord, absorbed into Saguenay in 2002. Petroleum scrip redeemable only at a single regional dealer had an extremely short effective life.