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5 Dollars
| Issuer | Bank of Montreal |
|---|---|
| Year | 1888 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio-printed note with a central allegorical vignette of a seated female figure flanked by a large numeral '5' in ornate guilloche surround, with portrait medallions of two distinguished gentlemen at left and right. The upper portion bears the issuer's title in bold letters with the legend 'WILL PAY ON DEMAND', and the paid-up capital of $12,000,000 is inscribed across the top border. The denomination 'Five Dollars' appears in script within decorative panels to either side of the central vignette, with repeated 'FIVE' and '5' counters in the corners, and the serial number appears twice in the upper register. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | BANK OF MONTREAL WILL PAY ON DEMAND FIVE DOLLARS PAID UP CAPITAL $12,000,000 FIVE 5 Montreal Jan. 2nd 1888 Countersigned |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Montreal was Canada's oldest chartered bank and effectively acted as the government's fiscal agent for much of the nineteenth century — a role that gave its notes an unusually wide geographic circulation, accepted well beyond Quebec. The British American Bank Note Company, formed in 1866 through a merger of two American firms that had relocated operations to Canada, held a near-monopoly on Canadian chartered bank printing by the 1880s and produced work of consistently high intaglio quality.
By 1888, the Dominion's 1871 Bank Act framework required chartered banks to maintain specie reserves backing their circulation. Notes of this period were redeemable on demand, which drove fairly rapid turnover — heavily worn examples from the 1880s issues are common precisely because they stayed in active use until worn out or redeemed.