7 Dollars

The $7 denomination is one of the stranger artifacts of pre-Confederation and early post-Confederation Canadian banking. Under the free banking arrangements of the era, chartered banks could issue notes in almost any denomination they chose, and several — including Molsons — issued $7 notes specifically to complicate counterfeiting. The logic: a forger setting up to copy a $5 or $10 note had templates and incentive; an odd denomination disrupted that calculus.

Molsons Bank, chartered in 1855 and operating out of Montreal, was one of the more conservative private issuers of the period. The Canadian Bank Note Printing Co. was itself newly established in Montreal at this time, having consolidated several smaller engraving operations.

The Bank Act of 1871 — passed the same year this note was issued — began restricting private bank note denominations, which effectively killed the $7 note almost immediately after printing.