8 Dollars = 2 Pounds

The eight-dollar denomination was a peculiarity of colonial Canadian banking, built around the fixed exchange rate of four dollars to the pound sterling — a convenience for merchants transacting in both currencies without doing mental arithmetic at the counter. The Commercial Bank of New Brunswick issued through St. John, a city whose commerce was heavily tied to timber export and the North Atlantic trade, meaning American dollars and British pounds passed through the same hands constantly.

The American Bank Note Company held a near-monopoly on quality security printing for Maritime banks by this period. New Brunswick entered Confederation in 1867, after which provincial bank notes were gradually absorbed into the Dominion currency system — this issue had fewer than a decade of practical relevance before the political ground shifted entirely beneath it.