5 Dollars

The Merchants Bank of Canada had operated since 1864 under a federal charter, and by 1900 was one of the larger chartered banks competing with the dominant Bank of Montreal for commercial business in the St. Lawrence trade corridor. Canadian chartered bank notes of this period circulated as legal private currency under the Bank Act, redeemable on demand — a system that persisted until the Bank of Canada's formation in 1934 finally ended private note issue.

The American Bank Note Company's Montreal branch handled much of the chartered bank printing work in this period, though the parent firm's New York engravers cut the original dies. The Merchants Bank was absorbed by the Bank of Montreal in 1922 following a collapse triggered by fraudulent loans under general manager Edson Pease's predecessor — making surviving pre-absorption notes genuinely terminal issues of a failed institution.