5 Dollars

The Home Bank of Canada holds a grim distinction in Canadian banking history: it was the only chartered bank to collapse in the twentieth century, failing in August 1923 and wiping out thousands of depositors — many of them Catholic immigrants in Ontario and the Prairie provinces who had trusted the institution specifically because of its close ties to the Toronto Catholic establishment. Notes from this series were still in circulation at the point of failure, leaving holders with worthless paper and no federal deposit protection, which did not yet exist.

The collapse directly prompted the 1924 revision of the Bank Act and early discussions about depositor insurance. The American Bank Note Company's Ottawa plant produced this series, one of the relatively few ABNC jobs executed on Canadian soil rather than at their New York facility.