5 Dollars (1 Pounds 10 Pence)

The Royal Bank of Canada was still issuing its own chartered bank notes in 1938 under the Dominion's Bank Act provisions, even though the Bank of Canada had begun monopolizing the right to issue notes in 1935. Chartered banks were permitted to continue circulating their own paper through a transitional period, but the clock was running — the Bank Act revisions of 1944 finally ended private bank note issuance in Canada for good, making this series among the last of its kind.

The dual denomination — five dollars expressed also as one pound ten pence — reflects lingering commercial ties to Britain and the Caribbean markets where Royal Bank operated extensively, particularly in the West Indies.