Bank of Upper Canada
With Bank of Upper Canada or the Bank of Upper Canada two Canadian banks were in the later province of Ontario called. The older of them existed only from 1819 to 1821 in Kingston , the little younger from 1819 or 1821 to 1866 in Toronto .
Bank of Upper Canada, Toronto
The approximately 45-year-old Bank of Upper Canada was founded in 1821 on the basis of a resolution from 1819 in Toronto , which at that time was still called York. It existed until 1866.
Like all banks in Canada that had its own banks only from 1819 onwards, the bank issued its own banknotes. After the first location in York became too small, the bank bought property from Sir William Campbell. The first director from 1821 to 1835 was William Allen, one of the richest men in town. A quarter of the bank's shares were in the hands of the so-called Family Compact , a demarcated group of families who practically controlled politics in the city. They appointed the bank's 15 directors. In 1824 they managed to oust the influential Bank of Montreal from the city, if only for three years. After that, the competition could no longer break the supremacy of the York Bank.
William Proudfoot, who was director from 1835 to 1861, could not prevent the rival bank from Montreal from receiving decisive privileges with the unification of the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841 . William Allan, who belonged to the group of leading families in Toronto, the so-called Family Compact , was director from 1861 to 1863 and again in 1865. Although Toronto became the capital of Montreal after the serious unrest of 1849 (Montreal Riots), the Toronto Bank was only able to benefit from it temporarily. Although it received similar privileges as the Montrealer Bank, it speculated on the great transcontinental railroad constructions.
The Prime Minister suggested making the Montreal Bank a government bank, similar to the Bank of England . This would have created a central bank. The commercial banks (chartered banks) should then primarily serve trade, especially international trade. A third banking group should be responsible for manufacturing and agriculture. Similar to the US dollar , the banknotes should no longer be redeemable; they were issued by all banks, provided they bought government bonds. As soon as the Canadian Bank of Commerce was established, the Upper Canada Bank collapsed.
The banking crisis from 1863 to 1864 began with the Bank of Upper Canada, which had taken over the railroad financing. When Luther Hamilton Holton became Secretary of the Treasury, the bank was no longer authorized to lend the government. She then turned to the Bank of Montreal . The bank's general manager, EH King, had stipulated that his house should replace Upper Canada Bank as fiscal agent - something the government was forced to do a year later in the face of a tumbling Upper Canada Bank. Despite repeated requests, the premier refused to support the bank, and when it collapsed, it carried away the Commercial Bank of Kingston , which declared bankruptcy on November 8, 1867. Finance Minister Galt had resigned shortly before. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, William McMaster, accused the bank of not having spent in the service of Canada, but in currency speculation in New York.
The fall of the bank and the behavior of the Montreal competition during the banking crisis meant that the former employee of the Toronto bank George Hague got all relevant banks behind him and toppled Treasury Secretary Rose. The bank headquarters of Halifax, Toronto and the city of Québec faced Montreal. Rose's successor was her exponent, Francis Hincks . In 1871, the Bank of Montreal lost its privileges with the Bank Act. However, given the harshness of the confrontation and the conflicting interests, a central bank could not be implemented.
The first Upper Canada Bank building was built in 1821 on the corner of King and Frederick Street. The bank's second building, completed in 1827–34, has been a National Historic Sites of Canada since 1977 ; the bank buildings in Port Hope, Ontario (1857) and Goderich, Ontario (1863) enjoy a similar rank . Both buildings are on the Registry of Historical Places of Canada . The building in Toronto, the oldest bank building in Canada, was in very poor condition around 1980 and has been restored at great expense. The driving force behind this was Sheldon Godfrey, who also made sure that the school and the city's fourth post office were restored. After the bank went bankrupt, the building was sold to the Christian brothers in 1871, who founded the De La Salle Institute . However, at the beginning of World War I the school was closed, after which the building served as a recruiting office for the Royal Air Force . The United Farmers of Ontario bought the structure in 1923 and sold the building around three decades later. After that it changed hands several times.
Bank of Upper Canada, Kingston
A Bank of Upper Canada was founded in Kingston as early as 1819, but it was not recognized as the colony's bank. This was due to the fact that an application for recognition had been made by London , but by then the underlying law was no longer valid. Therefore the impatient entrepreneurs founded the bank as a private bank. Without recognition, however, the creditworthiness of such a bank in the emerging Canadian monetary system was rather poor. In 1821 there were first internal conflicts between the president and some of his directors. The following year the bank was declared illegal and closed. At the time when the York-Toronto bank already existed and the Kingston Bank had not yet been closed, the York bankers referred to it as a pretended bank. During its three-year existence, the Kingston House issued $ 1, $ 2, $ 5, and $ 10 notes that were relatively forgery-proof.
literature
- Peter Baskerville: The Bank of Upper Canada. A Collection of Documents , McGill-Queen's University Press 1987.
Web links
- 33. The Bank of Upper Canada , Town of York Historical Society
- Toronto National Historic Sites Urban Walks , Parks Canada
Remarks
- ^ Bank of Upper Canada ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved November 11, 2015.