Gregory DL Morris |
The presence of those American entities lives on in more than their names and legacies. BMO is not a corporate sponsor of the legendary hometown Montreal Canadiens, but rather their rival Chicago Blackhawks and also the Minnesota Wild. In basketball BMO plays the field, sponsoring the Toronto Raptors, the only NBA franchise in Canada, but also the Chicago Bulls and the Milwaukee Bucks.
It is notable that the founding of the first bank in Canada was made by articles of association and not charter. Those British North American colonies were— as had been the American colonies before— directly responsible to London. Their governance and operation was not for their own direct benefit, but for the good of the mercantilist system that supported the British Empire. Prohibitions against indigenous colonial currency were one of the grievances that led to the American Revolution. BMO did receive a formal charter in 1822.
To put BMO’ s founding into historical context, the Bank of North America was founded in Philadelphia in 1781 and Alexander Hamilton had helped found the Bank of New York in 1784. Those were more than 30 years before BMO, but they were in response to dire circumstances of a newly-independent and deeply-indebted nation. The Bank of North America was formed after most of the fighting was over, but still two years before the treaty that ended the revolution. The Bank of New York was founded the year after the treaty.
The Bank of North America was succeeded by the First Bank of the United States in 1791, but given BMO’ s extensive cross-border activity from its inception, the Montreal institution could certainly be considered the bank of North America de facto if not de jure.
At the time of BMO’ s founding, Canada was just getting back on its feet as well. The influx of loyalists fleeing the new United States had created an unstable political situation in His Majesty’ s remaining North American colonies. That was sorted with the Constitutional Act of 1791 that redrew the boundaries of Quebec or Lower Canada( not lesser, just downriver on the St. Lawrence) and created Upper Canada, now the province of Ontario.
In the United States it is called the War of 1812, but in Canada it is called the Anglo- American war. A good bit of the land fighting took place in Canada where Canadians,
|
$ 20 bank note from the Bank of Montreal, dated October 1817, before the bank began business on November 3, 1817. The first notes were printed in Hartford, CT, where the bank then obtained the plates, bank note paper and press required for reproducing the notes in Montreal. |
Bank of Montreal stock certificates, like the one shown here, became a consequential type of document in the emerging economic and financial life of Canada. This certificate for two shares of stock is dated March 16, 1839. It is signed by Peter McGill, president of the bank, and countersigned by Benjamin Holmes, the bank’ s cashier. |
Bank of Montreal
Bank of Montreal
|