5 Dollars Provincial Bank of Canada

The Provincial Bank of Canada — Banque Provinciale du Canada — was a French-Canadian institution that traced its origins to the Banque d'Hochelaga merger of 1924. By 1936, Canadian chartered banks were still legally permitted to issue their own currency under the Bank Act, though the Bank of Canada had been established the previous year and was steadily absorbing that function. This note dates from the final years of meaningful private bank issue in Canada.

The Canadian Bank Note Company in Ottawa printed for virtually every major chartered bank of the period, making printer attribution here unremarkable. What distinguishes this issue is simply its timing — 1936 notes from smaller chartered banks were produced in limited quantities as the writing was clearly on the wall for private circulation currency.