In 1928 , the Bank of Montreal opened this bank in Mayo , Yukon Territory — an inland mining town 250 miles from Whitehorse at the confluence of the Mayo and Stewart Rivers .
a free-trade agreement with the United States . Nothing personal , just business .
Not surprisingly , BMO was involved in the financing of the Canadian Pacific Railway , completed in 1885 , just 16 years after the transcontinental railroad was completed in the US . But that was not BMO ’ s first rail venture . The bank helped finance the first railway in Canada , the Champlain & St . Lawrence , which ran 16 miles from La Prairie , on the opposite bank of the St . Lawrence River , to St . Johns , Quebec , at the head of navigation on the Richelieu River .
A modest run to be sure , but when it began service in 1836 it completed the connection from Montreal to New York by way of steamers on Lake Champlain and the Hudson River . It also put Canada on the cutting edge of transportation and technology . The world ’ s first railway , the Stockton & Darlington in England , had begun operations just 11 years earlier . And the first US railroad , the Baltimore & Ohio , started service just six years before the Canadian road .
As the nation grew , so did BMO . As negotiations for confederation advanced , the accounts for the Province of Canada were transferred to BMO late in 1863 . Just three years after confederation , BMO opened a permanent office in the City of London . The bank had long had offices in New York .
Communication with Europe became a practical reality when Cyrus Field laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable between Newfoundland and Ireland in 1858 . US President James Buchanan was able to exchange greetings with Queen Victoria , but the cable parted after only a few weeks . The end of the American Civil War not only prompted confederation in Canada , but also allowed renewed cable laying . Regular and reliable service was established by 1867 . Today BMO operates in 22 countries on five continents .
Canada created an official central bank
in 1935 , long after most other industrialized nations . That was in part because decisions made by the US Federal Reserve and by the Bank of England had powerful effects on Canadian international business , and also because BMO was prudent and effective as the government ’ s banker . In a bank note footnote , “ The right of chartered banks to issue or reissue their own notes expired on 1 January 1945 ,” according to A Vision Greater than Themselves .
Postwar prosperity boomed in Canada as in the United States . It was steady on for four decades . Then , over the course of a few years , BMO jumped into a much higher orbit with the acquisition of Chicago ’ s august Harris Bank in 1984 . In 1987 BMO added Nesbitt Thomson , one of the largest brokerages in Canada .
The Bank Finds a Forgery
For many years this painting , Place d ’ Armes , Montreal ( 1848 , oil on canvas ), in the BMO Art Collection was thought to be by Cornelius David Krieghoff ( 1815 – 1872 ). However , the bank ’ s curators , working with the expert on Krieghoff , Dennis Reid , former chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario , confirmed that the BMO painting is a fake .
“ There are apparently a number of these copies dating from the artist ’ s own time to the late 19th century , when it didn ’ t seem unusual or wrong to copy a work by a ‘ famous ’ artist right down to their signature ,” said Dawn Cain , curator of the BMO collection . “ The [ unknown ] copyist in question may have been working from a series of prints based on popular works by Krieghoff that were published in the late 1840s , one of which shows the same scene rendered in the painting .”
Even though the work is only in the style of Krieghoff , it reflects both the period and the bank : European roots and strong cross-border North American scope . Krieghoff was born in 1815 in Amsterdam , worked and studied in France and Germany , and then came to New York in 1836 . He moved to Montreal in 1846 , where he both partook in salon society and also lived for a while with the Mohawk First Nation . He lived and worked in Canada , the United States and Germany through his life .
His work is actively collected today and is contemporaneous with Currier & Ives and also the Hudson River School , which are more familiar to many Americans .
Any brokers of any age would do well to match brokers in 1917 who recommended buying the stock of the bank on its centennial . A single share of BMO when issued at the height of the Great War effort that year was worth c $ 222 , or c $ 3,600 in 2016 dollars , as calculated in A Vision Greater than Themselves . Through appreciation , four splits and reinvesting dividends , that single share would now be 52,000 shares worth c $ 4.4 million .
Somewhere , the Montreal Nine are smiling all the way to the bank .
Gregory DL Morris is an independent business journalist , principal of Enterprise & Industry Historic Research ( www . enterpriseandindustry . com ) and an active member of the Museum ’ s editorial board .
Bank of Montreal www . MoAF . org | Winter 2017 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 31