Several banks set up on Saint-Jacques Street, including the Bank of Montreal, the Banque du peuple, and the Montreal City and District Savings Bank. One-sou (halfpenny) and two-sou (penny) tokens were minted in England for the Province of Lower Canada.

What you see here are bank tokens. After the 1830s, Montréal’s banks imported them in large quantities from England to supplement the supply of currency. Each token was worth one or two sous.

The problem: nothing was centralized. Each bank struck its own tokens, and merchants added theirs to the mix… a real headache! To simplify matters, Montréal’s three banks and the Quebec Bank joined forces and issued a new token, commonly known as the “Habitant” because of the figure in traditional dress shown on the obverse; that figure’s silhouette also earned these tokens the nickname “Papineaus.” At the bottom right of the image, you can recognize it by its effigy of a French Canadian habitant.