5 Dollars

The Eastern Townships Bank was chartered in 1859 to serve the predominantly English-speaking Protestant communities of Quebec's Eastern Townships — a region settled largely by United Empire Loyalists and later by British immigrants who had little cultural connection to the French Canadian banking institutions centered in Montreal and Quebec City. The bank headquartered in Sherbrooke operated independently until its absorption by the Canadian Bank of Commerce in 1912.

The British American Bank Note Company had only been established in Montreal in 1866, consolidating work previously sent to American and British firms. By 1879 it was the dominant Canadian note printer, and this issue reflects their early output for regional chartered banks — a segment of Canadian notaphily that attracts serious collector attention precisely because so few examples survived active rural circulation.