5 Dollars

The Bank of Ottawa was chartered in 1874 and remained an independent institution until its absorption by the Bank of Montreal in 1919 — one of the consolidations that reshaped Canadian chartered banking in the early twentieth century. Notes from this series predate that merger by nearly two decades, placing them firmly in the period when the Bank of Ottawa was actively competing for commercial business in the Ottawa Valley and beyond.

Charles Magee served as president during a period of genuine expansion for the bank. The British American Bank Note Company, headquartered in Ottawa itself, printed the bulk of Canadian chartered bank issues of this period, giving the local press an unusual concentration of the country's private currency production.