Who Founded BMO?

John Richardson (c. 1754–1831) was a prominent Scottish-Canadian merchant, statesman, and politician in Lower Canada who served as the first president of Montreal Bank upon its founding in 1817. A senior partner in the influential fur-trading firm Forsyth, Richardson & Co., Richardson recognized that the colony's reliance on foreign silver coins and army bills severely hindered industrial commerce. He spearheaded the drafting of the bank's original Articles of Association and rules of governance, modeling them after Alexander Hamilton's First Bank of the United States. Richardson's disciplined conservative oversight established the bank's credibility, ensuring that its banknotes were redeemed at face value in gold and silver, which stabilized the colonial financial system and enabled the commercial development of Montreal.

Austin Cuvillier (1779–1849) was an eminent French-Canadian merchant, political reformer, and future Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Canada, who united with eight leading British and Scottish Montreal merchants—including George Moffatt, Horatio Gates, Robert Armour, Thomas A. Turner, John C. Bush, James Leslie, and William Robertson—to establish Montreal Bank on November 3, 1817. Pooling £25,000 in personal capital, this bi-cultural merchant syndicate created Canada's first chartered banking institution. Cuvillier played a pivotal role in bridging British colonial finance and French-Canadian commercial interests, drafting the French-language banking charter and establishing the foundational clearing mechanisms that allowed the bank to serve as the fledgling country's financial backbone.