Home Bank

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The Home Bank of Canada was a Canadian bank that was incorporated July 10, 1903 in Toronto. It failed Aug 18, 1923 and was the subject of a Canadian Royal Commission initiated by Prime Minister Mackenzie King in 1924.

Founded with the support of the Roman Catholic Church, James Mason and Henry Pellatt represented a benign board of directors including E.G. Gooderham, Claude Macdonnell and 3 other directors from Winnipeg, Manitoba affiliated with the United Grain Growers.

Early in its history a number of questionable loans were advanced, including one to A.C. 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.^{[citation needed]} In 1912 it undertook a campaign of expanding in Quebec and eastern Canada, to the chagrin of the western Canadian Directors who were seeing much of the banks capital unavailable for western loans. At the same time, many of the large loans went unpaid and the accrued interest, through a form of bank fraud, was recapitalized onto the principal of the loans.

William Machaffie, Manager of the Winnipeg Branch and a banker since 1882 told the western directors as early as 1914 that the "cooking of the books" through the adding of unpaid interest to the principal and then calculating the interest as profit to pay dividends to major shareholders and directors was wrong. Machaffie wanted to tell the minister of finance at the time, Thomas White, but the western directors were not so sure. This was war time and this issue of a Bank Crisis was not something the government of the time was prepared to deal with. After a leave of absence in 1917 Machaffie returned to his desk to find his position was gone. He in turn wrote a letter to the minster of finance outlined issues regarding bad loans, capitalization of unpaid interest, and accounting malpractice at head office, and stated the only hope for the banks survival was a merger. He made the decision not to send the letter to the minister but instead to the Board to "stir things up a bit". He was fired. On Aug 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-arms length loans as well as 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, opening an additional 28 branches (for a total of 82) between 1921 and 1923. Though this period, under greater government scutiny and with the death of Senator 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".

The bank's circus act fell to the ground and it fell hard, in what was an alarmingly familiar pattern. The major chartered banks intervened in 1920 to control rising prices by raising interest rates. Demand for credit fell and the resulting recession drove prices down dramatically making assets worth less than the money loaned to acquire them. During this time, and with the dust storms of the 1922-1923 drought, many farmers lost their land and livelihood. The indifference of the Eastern Banking community lead to the success of right wing popularist parties in the West. In 1922 the United Grain Growers, whose officers comprised the western bank board members, sold all of their shares in the bank. 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 Liberal government for help, which was refused. The stock plummeted and dispositors withdrew money in ever-swelling streams. On the August civic-holiday, J. Cooper Mason, son of the founder and a Director, retired to his study and put a service revolver to his head. The dam was burst... the Canadian National Railways whose director Richard F. Gough was also a member of the Banks board, withdrew $1 million just before the collapse. The bank Closed for good Aug 17, 1923. Ten officials from Home bank were arrested on charges ranging from concurring with false returns to fraud on Oct 4, 1923 at a time when the banks assets were estimated at $2.7 Million and liabilities at $15.5 million. 60,000 prairie farmers and the bulk of Toronto's Catholic community lost their savings and in the panic that followed, the Ontario Government shored up the Dominion Bank with $1.5 million to stop a deposit run. Herbert Daly was unable to testify after a nervous breakdown and he died Oct 22, 1923,

Secrecy of Cabinet rules protected politicians from any liablity in the matter and, in a precedent setting bailout, the federal government agreed to pay $5,450,000 to depositors (Deposit Insurance was not enacted until 1967 in Canada) providing some settlement to the thousands who lost money as a result of the failure which, had the bank been liquidated or merged in 1916 or 1918 would have been without any loss to depositors.

See also: List of Canadian banks

Template:Reference from Breaking the Banks. Arthur Johnson 1986