Catalog
4 Dollars
| Issuer | Bank of Western Canada |
|---|---|
| Year | 1859 |
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| Value | 4 Dollars |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is engraved in a classical intaglio style typical of American Bank Note Company issues. A central vignette presents a reclining lion atop a globe, flanked on the left by an oval portrait medallion of a male figure in military dress and on the right by an oval portrait of Queen Victoria in crown and regalia. The denomination "FOUR" appears in large red letterpress across the lower centre, with the bank title "BANK OF WESTERN CANADA" inscribed across the middle, and the numeral "4" repeated in each corner within guilloche panels. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is essentially plain, printed on aged cotton paper with a large mirror-image red letterpress denomination "FOUR" centred on an otherwise unadorned field, with faint ghost impressions of the obverse visible through the paper. |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Western Canada was chartered in 1857 and headquartered in Clifton, Ontario — the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls crossing — positioning it to capture cross-border commercial traffic. It never achieved meaningful scale. The four-dollar denomination was a Canadian banking convention designed to complement the Spanish milled dollar still circulating widely in the region, allowing easy change-making against the five-dollar note.
The bank collapsed before Confederation, its charter effectively dead by the early 1860s. Notes printed by the American Bank Note Company but never fully issued survived in much larger quantities than circulated examples, which is why unissued remainders dominate the collector market for this series.