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50 Dollars
| Issuer | Merchants Bank of Canada |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio on green guilloche underprint. Vignette of a standing stag at left and a portrait vignette of a young woman known as "Reverie" at right. Large numeral "50" at centre within ornate lathe-work, with bank title above and date line reading Montreal, January 1917 below. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Uniform green intaglio on green guilloche underprint. The bank's heraldic crest, incorporating a beehive motif, occupies the central vignette within an elaborate starburst lathe-work frame. Denomination counters "50" appear in four corners within circular guilloche medallions. |
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| Comments |
The Merchants Bank of Canada was already in institutional decline by 1917, though few would have predicted it. The bank collapsed in 1922 in one of the more dramatic failures in Canadian chartered banking history — a combination of mismanagement under president Sir Herbert Holt's predecessor regime and wartime loan exposure. Notes issued in its final years carry that trajectory. The Dominion government absorbed the wreckage through a forced merger with the Bank of Montreal.
ABNC operated a facility in Ottawa by this period, so the printing location aligns with wartime logistics rather than being anomalous. Fifty-dollar denominations in chartered bank issues circulated almost exclusively in commercial and interbank transactions — retail handling was rare, which affects surviving condition distributions for this series.