10 Dollars = 2 Pounds-10 Shillings

Fairman, Draper and Underwood were among the most accomplished security engravers working in North America in the 1830s, their Philadelphia operation producing plates of a quality that Canadian chartered banks actively sought out over domestic alternatives. The Bank of Montreal, chartered in 1817 and by 1835 firmly established as the dominant commercial institution in British North America, used this dual-denomination format — dollars alongside pounds-shillings — as a practical necessity, not an affectation. The two currencies circulated simultaneously, and a note that spoke only one monetary language would have been commercially limiting in a colony where British sterling accounts and American dollar dealings overlapped daily.

The 1835 date places this issue well before Confederation and before any standardized Canadian currency legislation. Survival rate is low; chartered bank paper from this decade was subject to redemption, fire, and institutional purges of old stock.