It wasn’t until I got home, and looked more closely at the image I posted previously, that I saw engraved on the cornice the words “The Home Bank of Canada.”
The Home Bank of Canada was a Canadian bank that was incorporated July 10, 1903 in Toronto. It succeeded the earlier Toronto Savings Bank, which had been founded in 1854 by Bishop Armand-François-Marie de Charbonnel and the local chapter of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and later Home Savings and Loans in 1871. The failure of Home Bank on August 18, 1923, was the subject of a Canadian Royal Commission initiated by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1924.
Wikipedia
The failure of the Home Bank of Canada in 1923 was a significant event that exposed weaknesses in Canada’s banking system and ultimately led to increased regulatory oversight. At the time, the Home Bank was one of Canada’s largest financial institutions, and its collapse was a shock to the nation. The failure resulted in substantial losses for depositors and shareholders, and it undermined public confidence in the Canadian banking system.
This crisis led to calls for stronger regulations and oversight to prevent such failures in the future. Prior to the Home Bank failure, Canadian banks were generally self-regulated, and there were limited mechanisms for government oversight. However, the collapse made it clear that more robust controls were needed to protect depositors and maintain the integrity of the financial system.
It is, simply put, another example of how criminal elements will leverage the trust certain words engender to their benefit.
[1] John Turley-Ewart, The Bank That Went Bust, Canada’s History, August 1, 2004 (https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/business-industry/the-bank-that-went-bust).
[2] John Turley-Ewart, How Home Bank’s collapse 100 years ago changed Canada’s banking system forever, Financial Post, August 21, 2023 (https://financialpost.com/feature/home-bank-collapse-100-years-changed-canada-banking-system)
[3] Wikipedia contributors, “Home Bank of Canada,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Home_Bank_of_Canada&oldid=1170782138 (accessed October 9, 2023).
Leave a Reply