1920 - 1939

Engulfed by 2 1/2 feet of water from the banks of the Highwood River, the flooded Royal Bank branch at High River typified the woes of the Canadian West in the 1930s where drought and floods wreaked havoc on its farming communities. The Depression was not just a prairie phenomenon. In the banking halls of both Toronto and Montreal bad loans were written off and many Atlantic branches remained dormant. Despite the trauma inflicted on bank clients and staff during the Depression, Canada's banks wobbled but did not topple. Unlike the United States, where bank failures were common, there was not a single bank failure in Canada during the Depression.

Post-war expansion and the 1925 purchase of the Union Bank of Canada fuelled Royal Bank's expansion in the 1920s. Wherever the Canadian economy moved - Royal Bank followed. Throughout the 1920s, Canada's bustling street corners became a focal point for branch expansion. In May 1920, Vancouver's East End branch opened a Chinese department staffed by Chinese-Canadians. Three years later, a Japanese department was established in a separate section of the branch.

For many Royal bankers, as for others, the first hint of depression had come with the news of drought in the West in the summer of 1929. Even before the October stock-market crash, branch managers in Saskatchewan and Alberta reported pending farm loan losses resulting from parched soil. Feeling that the hard times were only a temporary aberration, bank officers responded with traditional conservatism and prudence by calling the nation to return to what was perceived as the fundamentals of national economic life: a balanced budget, reduced taxes and orderly marketing.

"He's the man to photograph," Montague Norman, governor of the Bank of England, told the press when Graham Towers arrived in London just days after leaving Royal Bank to become the governor of the Bank of Canada in 1934. Another Royal banker, Edson Pease, was the first to campaign for a Canadian central bank in 1918.

As commodity prices tumbled and protectionism strangled world trade, Royal Bank vice-president and general manager Morris Wilson, and a handful of bank directors, ventured out on a month long fact-finding tour of Western Canada in September 1934. The bank's entourage met with local business leaders, farmers and the premiers of the four western provinces to obtain a first hand understanding of the full impact of the Depression on Canada's West. Pictured above is Edward W. Beatty, president of Canadian Pacific Railway, speaking to Winnipeg's Chamber of Commerce, with Morris Wilson seated in left foreground.