By Dan Bourgeois
Known as the Bank Apartments, this building was originally home to the Millbrook Banking Co.
The impressive two story buff brick building at 14 King St West in Millbrook is nicknamed the Bank Apartments.
This got me wondering: Which bank? This led to looking into how banks arose and functioned in small town Ontario, especially in our neighbourhood.
A variety of banks had been chartered in the growing cities and larger towns of Upper and Lower Canada in the mid1800s, around the time European settlement was happening in our area. However, these banks weren’t very interested in opening branches in the rough and tumble hinterlands. It was considered that these subsistence farmers, small shopkeepers, millers, blacksmiths and others in the hamlets and villages were a poor financial risk and not worth the bother of dealing with them. Nevertheless, the cash economy was becoming part of life even in the back-woods and barter or payment in labour alone wouldn’t work well if a blacksmith had to purchase iron for his forge or a merchant needed bolts of cloth, sugar or tea and other items not available locally. A young man wishing to buy land for a farm might need to obtain a mortgage. A local landowner might need a loan to construct an inn or tavern, or a cabinet maker to build his shop and purchase tools.
In Millbrook, as in many other small communities of rural Ontario, private bankers set up shop to serve the financial needs of the community; to provide small loans, mortgages and a place to deposit whatever cash and savings a family, farmer or small business might have accumulated. Many also sold insurance. In most cases, the local private banker was also the most significant local entrepreneur, operating successfully as a merchant, grain dealer, lumber manor miller.
Between 1870 and the First World War over 600 private banks were set up in Ontario, largely in small towns and villages. Most were well run and fairly successful at providing a necessary service to the community. Some fell to bad luck, mismanagement and a few to fraudulent or other criminal activity (as did some of the big chartered banks of their day).
What about our local banks? From 1874 to 1880, Molson’s Bank of Montreal(yes, of the Molson brewery family; it later merged with the Bank of Montreal) had an agent in Millbrook who carried out some banking activity. In 1881Thomas J. Kells and Archibald Wood established Wood, Kells and Co Bank. They were local merchants and dealers in dry and staple goods. Among other things, they built the Wood and Kells block, a heritage structure from 17-21 King St East in Millbrook. It now houses Whale Family Chiropractic, Millbrook PC and Altermedia, The Pastry Peddler and the Revive Refillery, as well as apartments above.
In the same year of 1881 former building contractor Thomas Fawcett of Strathroy opened a branch of his chain of banks, locally named the Millbrook Banking Co. According to the local history This Green and Pleasant Land, it was this bank that originally leased what became the Millbrook Apartments. However, the entire chain went bankrupt in 1884 and judging from the lawsuits that arose from this, there was likely more than bad luck and poor management involved in the collapse of this bank.
It appears that Wood and Kells then moved into 14 King St West. Aside from involvement in local affairs they were very invested in the 1881-82 migration to what is now Souris, Manitoba. For many years they dealt in and operated farms as well as providing banking services to the new community out west.
In 1889, Mr T.B. Collins of Millbrook, a local merchant, established T B Collins and Co as a bank. His home (named Fairweather) on 24 King St West has been described as “an exuberant example of Victorian Gothic”. Given the size and quality of the house, he must have been doing fairly well.
Both Collins Bank and Wood and Kells were apparently successful, both for the owners and shareholders, as well as the community. In the 1890s, Wood and Kells (the somewhat larger of the two in terms of holdings), received a “high” credit worthiness rating and the Collins Bank a “good” rating.
By the early 1900s, most small private banks were struggling as the chartered banks began opening more branches and the small banks couldn’t compete with them. The Collins Bank ceased operations in 1909. I’m not sure what happened to its assets. The Wood and Kells Bank was sold to the Bank of Toronto in 1912, which later merged with the Dominion Bank, forming what is now TD. A new bank building was con-structed on the corner of King and Tupper St in 1913. This branch closed in August 2017and the building now houses Millbrook Village Dental.
As for 14 King St West, for many years it served as the manse (home) of the minister of St Andrew’s Methodist, later United Church (now the Millbrook Cathedral). From the 1960s to 1990s it was home to Ernst Hadorn, an eccentric fellow originally from Switzerland. After Ernst died, the building was acquired by John Spence, a local house painter and contractor, who renovated it with his son into an apartment building.
I’m told the original bankvault is still there.