Among the most stable enterprises at home and abroad are Canada's national banks. Supportive legislation, economic growth, and international expansion provided a solid foundation for these institutions. Bankers, however, as the administrators and investors of economic growth, seldom receive the same recognition as that accorded the builders: the architects, developers, planners, and engineers. Edson Pease is no exception. However, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, he mapped out a strategy that turned a provincial bank into a national and international force known today as Royal Bank of Canada.
 

William Notman photograph of Edson Pease in 1908.  [Photo, courtesy McCord Museum of Canadian History, Notman Photographic Archives]

Edson Loy Pease was born at Coteau Landing on the St. Lawrence River near Montreal, Quebec, in 1856, the twelfth of 14 children born to a dry goods merchant. Pease left school at age 14 to work as a telegraph operator, and at that job he learned the importance of fast, timely information. Historian Duncan McDowall has noted that Pease's birth in proximity to the commercial empire that was the St. Lawrence River and his experience with the telegraph gave him a transcontinental vision when in 1833 he was hired as an accountant by the Merchant's Bank of Halifax.

In turning a provincial bank into a proud national business establishment, Edson Pease urged that a branch be established in Montreal in 1887. By absorbing existing banks in Ontario and Quebec and, bypassing the Prairies, setting up new branches in British Columbia, the Merchant's Bank of Halifax had achieved national scope even before January 2, 1901 when it became the Royal Bank of Canada. Pease used a policy of balancing those areas that saved at low interest rates with those that borrowed at high rates. The western boom, accompanied by immigration, the rise of the wheat staple, and the Laurier era in national politics, gave the bank ample opportunity to build a national infrastructure. In 1899 Pease was appointed a joint general manager of the Bank with David Duncan. Pease was responsible for Montreal westward and was the dominant force in decision making. In 1908 Pease was appointed vice-president of the Royal Bank and, in 1916, assumed a new role as chief executive and managing director. Between 1899 and 1922 when he retired, Pease, by turning to amalgamations with Canada and expansion beyond, set a national scope and international foundation for the Royal Bank.
Mergers made the Royal Bank Canada's leading institution. Between 1910 and 1918, the height of Pease's power, the Royal Bank opened or acquired 526 new bank branches in Canada, including The Traders Bank of Canada in 1912 and the Quebec Bank in 1917. Previous to Pease's arrival, or before he became the dominant force in the Bank, the Merchant's Bank of Halifax had set up connections with Bermuda and with St. Pierre and Miquelon in 1882 and Washington state, and made a major intrusion into sugar-rich Cuba. Between 1907 and 1920, the Royal Bank set up branches in 17 Caribbean islands, 6 South American and 3 Central American countries. It also had export branches in London, Paris, and Barcelona. Under the management of Pease, the Royal not only became a great international bank but set a style that defined a Canadian banking tradition distinct from those of other countries, most noticeably England, France, and the United States. Canadian banks such as the Royal were, in some cases, the only or, certainly, the most significant Canadian presence in several countries in the western hemisphere before the emergence of Canadian diplomatic or consular ties.

Edson Pease, one of the visionary founders of the Bank of Canada as a central institution with controls on national bank note circulation and the regulation of internal credit, foreign exchange, and monetary policy, rigorously campaigned for a central bank as early as 1918, but it was not until after his death in 1930 and after the Great Depression had savaged the social, political, and economic underpinnings of the world that the Bank of Canada was born in 1935.

Canadian Banks have long been known for their prestige and stability in international affairs, and Edson Pease played a considerable role in fashioning the Canadian style abroad. Through his creation and direction of Canada's largest bank and his setting in motion the idea of a government-controlled central bank for the regulation of monetary policy, he was a most significant player in Canada's financial coming of age. Edson Pease had an enormous impact, both at home and abroad, on the character and growth of Canadian banking.

Larry Turner