Home Bank of Canada

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.

Frost Company to buy timber rights in British Columbia, and another to the New Orleans Gouther and Grand Isle Railway secured by a rolling stock of dilapidated rail cars.

He wrote a letter to the Minister of Finance which outlined issues regarding bad loans, capitalization of unpaid interest, and accounting malpractice at head office, and stated the only hope for the bank's survival was a merger.

On August 29, 1918, he drafted a new letter and this time sent it to the Minister of Finance outlining his concerns and a litany of delinquent and non-arm's length loans and issues related to serious flaws in the Home Bank's internal auditing process.

The post-war period brought prosperity and the inflationary boom gave Home Bank its share of the Canadian penchant for saving money.

Though this period, under greater government scrutiny and with the death of Senator James Mason in 1918, the new president of the bank, Herbert Daly was challenged to "keep all the balls in the air at the same time".

At the same time the Western Canada Pulp and Paper Company had defaulted and, in the spring of 1923 the bank asked Mackenzie King's government for help, which was refused.