5 Dollars Royal Bank of Canada

The Royal Bank of Canada was still headquartered in Montreal when this note was issued, having relocated there from Halifax only in 1907 following rapid expansion into Quebec and Ontario. The 1913 series appeared at the peak of a pre-war credit boom that would collapse almost immediately — by August 1914, Canadian chartered banks were scrambling to manage liquidity, and Dominion government notes increasingly displaced private bank currency in everyday commerce.

The Canadian Bank Note Company in Ottawa printed for most of the major chartered banks simultaneously, which creates attribution headaches when plate-printed marginal text is ambiguous. On this series, printer identification is unambiguous.