5 Dollars

The Royal Bank's 1933 issues came during one of the most contractionary moments in Canadian banking history — chartered banks were actively reducing note circulation as deflationary pressure mounted and public confidence in paper money wavered. The Canadian Bank Note Company had been the dominant printer for chartered bank issues since the early twentieth century, and by this period the relationship was essentially exclusive for most of the major banks.

Watermarking on chartered bank notes of this era was a quiet but deliberate anti-counterfeiting measure; the Depression had brought a noticeable uptick in fraudulent currency across North America. Surviving examples from the 1933 series tend to show heavy circulation wear — these notes were used hard in a cash-dependent economy where banking alternatives were not available to most Canadians.