5 Dollars Bank of Montreal

The Bank of Montreal's 1923 Dominion-era chartered bank notes occupied an unusual legal position: they circulated as de facto currency despite being private liabilities, not government obligations. The federal government had been steadily legislating chartered banks out of the note-issuing business since 1934, but the 1923 series predates that pressure entirely — these were printed during the last decade when such issuance was still genuinely profitable.

Williams-Taylor and Meredith were both serving Bank of Montreal presidents whose tenures overlapped the signing window for this series. The dual-signature format was standard for the bank's notes of this period, with one signature from each of two senior officers as a control measure against fraudulent issuance.