Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Richard M. Renneboog, post: 2891943, member: 89693&quot;]Certainly does. The inscription &quot;Province du Bas Canada&quot; translates to &#039;Province of Lower Canada&#039;, which in the present day is the Province of Quebec. Lower Canada extended most of the way to the east coast, where parts had been colonized by Scottish and Irish&nbsp; (Gaelic) settlers, and to the west in the area of the Ottawa Valley and Gatineau Hills. Modern-day Ontario was known at that time as Upper Canada, and was mostly settled by British. As this was still thirty years before Confederation, most of Upper Canada was wild forest land, with permanent settlements only along the major waterways. The interior was still very much the realm of First Nations peoples, and a mixture of French and British explorers. There are a few pockets of French heritage in southern Ontario to this day, and fully one-third of Canadians have French as their first language. The coin in the picture was issued by one of the privately operated banks that existed at the time, probably the one that later became the Bank of Montreal (known as BMO today). It was a trade token, and not government-minted coinage, as there was no national mint at that time. Businesses and banking functions that existed in different parts of the settled areas could issue their own tokens as a means of facilitating trade in the region. The only actual &#039;money&#039; in both Upper and Lower Canada was whatever came over from Britain and France, but there wasn&#039;t very much of that due to a scarcity of metals for common coinage following the Napoleonic Wars.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in