Catalog
50 Dollars
| Issuer | Bank of Montreal |
|---|---|
| Year | 1931 |
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| Reference(s) | P#S556 |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | the Bank of Montreal WILL PAY TO BEARER ON DEMAND 50 FIFTY DOLLARS 50 MONTREAL, JAN. 2ND 1931 GENERAL MANAGER PRESIDENT |
| Reverse description | Printed in green intaglio on white paper, the reverse centres on a detailed architectural vignette of the Bank of Montreal's Toronto Branch, a neoclassical building rendered with fine line engraving and captioned 'TORONTO BRANCH' below. The denomination numeral '50' appears in large format at left and right within guilloche panels, with 'BANK OF MONTREAL' arched across the top border and 'Fifty Dollars' in stylised lettering beneath the central vignette. The printer's imprint 'CANADIAN BANK NOTE COMPANY, LIMITED' appears in small type at the lower margin. |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Montreal's 1931 series was printed during a period of acute financial anxiety in Canada — the Depression had already gutted commodity prices and was beginning to strain public confidence in chartered banks. Jackson Dodds served as General Manager of the Bank of Montreal from 1927 to 1934; C.B. Gordon was Chairman of the Board. Having both a senior executive and a board-level signatory on the note was deliberate, a quiet institutional signal of stability at a moment when stability was not guaranteed.
The Canadian Bank Note Company had been the dominant supplier to the chartered banks since the early twentieth century, and by 1931 their Ottawa plant was handling virtually the entire private note output for the country.
At the $50 denomination, surviving examples from this issue are considerably scarcer than lower values — high-denomination chartered bank notes were rarely broken into circulation and tended to be redeemed quickly once the 1944 Bank Act amendments began squeezing out private currency.