Editing Upper Canada (section)

====Bank of Upper Canada====
{{main|Bank of Upper Canada}}
[[File:Bank of Upper Canada.JPG|thumbnail|left|The Bank of Upper Canada, Toronto]]
The Bank of Upper Canada was "captured" from Kingston merchants by the York elite at the instigation of [[John Strachan]] in 1821, with the assistance of [[William Allan (banker)|William Allan]], a Toronto merchant and Executive Councillor. York was too small to warrant such an institution as indicated by the inability of its promoters to raise even the minimal 10% of the £200,000 authorized capital required for start-up. It succeeded where the Bank of Kingston had failed only because it had the political influence to have this minimum reduced by half, and because the provincial government subscribed for two thousand of its eight thousand shares. The administration appointed four of the bank's fifteen directors that, as with the [[Clergy Corporation]], made for a tight bond between the nominally private company and the state. Forty-four men served as bank directors during the 1830s; eleven of them were executive councillors, fifteen of them were legislative councillors, and thirteen were magistrates in Toronto. More importantly, all 11 men who had ever sat on the Executive Council also sat on the board of the Bank at one time or another. 10 of these men also sat on the Legislative Council. The overlapping membership on the boards of the Bank of Upper Canada and on the Executive and Legislative Councils served to integrate the economic and political activities of church, state, and the "financial sector." These overlapping memberships reinforced the oligarchic nature of power in the colony and allowed the administration to operate without any effective elective check. The Bank of Upper Canada was a political sore point for the [[The Reform Movement (Upper Canada)|Reformers]] throughout the 1830s.<ref>{{harvp|Schrauwers|2010|pages=22–26}}</ref>