Photo: Branch Office, Bank of Montreal, Castor, Alberta, 1909.
Source: Bank of Montreal Archives.

Dr. Gregory P. Marchildon, eminent historian and University of Toronto professor and host of Witness to Yesterday, the Champlain Society podcast on Canadian history, met recently with SIERC CEO & author Dr. Laurence B. Mussio to ask him about his landmark work on the history of Bank of Montreal: Whom Fortune Favours: The Bank of Montreal and the Rise of North American Finance, Vols 1 & 2, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

In addressing the significance of Canada’s “first bank” and its role in the history of Canada, Dr. Mussio draws engagingly on his intimate knowledge of the Bank’s archives, its people and its 200-year history.

The show airs in two parts.

Part One (broadcast May 1, 2020) covers the years of the first volume and looks at the Bank’s influence from its beginning in 1817 to the end of the Second World War: Volume One: A Dominion of Capital, 1817-1945.

Part Two (broadcast May 20, 2020) focuses on the insights of the second volume, leading from the war up to modern times: Volume Two: Territories of Transformation, 1946-2017.

LISTEN TO PART ONE

Note: The 1909 photo of the Caster Branch – built and opened on the very same day – is one of a number of archival images to be found in Whom Fortune Favours.