6 August 2025

In Canada, even local banks care

The personal touch remains as vital as ever here.

One of our first tasks on arrival in Canada was to buy ourselves a car. We trekked round several dealers before putting a deposit on a nearly new Ford Escape petrol hybrid.

“We’d need the balance by banker’s cheque,” Josh, the salesman, said. Credit cards charge too high a fee, he explained, and there was always the risk that a transaction could be stopped after a car had left the showroom. A banker’s cheque represents cleared funds payable to the dealership – as good as cash, but without the risks inherent in handling large sums in notes.

I joined the queue at the local branch of Scotiabank. I wasn’t the only person vehicle shopping. An elderly man ahead of me approached the counter and asked the teller for a banker’s cheque for $14,000.

“It’s for my truck, for my truck, it’s for my truck.”

I put him at about 70. He had a smattering of stubble on his jaw. The cashier took the paper from him with the payee’s details written on it. “Fourteen thousand, you say, Joe?”

“Fourteen thousand. Fourteen thousand, fourteen thousand for my truck, for my truck, it’s for my truck.”

Perseveration is a pattern of uncontrollable repetition, sometimes of an action or movement, sometimes a thought or idea, but most commonly of a word or phrase, when it’s known as verbal perseveration. It reflects dysfunction in specific brain areas, typically the frontal lobes, where higher executive functions such as impulse control and attention are governed. A range of psychiatric, neurodevelopmental and neurological conditions can result in perseveration, including stroke, Parkinson’s disease and dementia. It is frequently exacerbated by stress.

“It’s a good truck, is it, Joe? You’ve given it a good look over?” The teller sounded unfazed by his customer’s unusual speech, but I saw him glance across to a glass-walled office behind the far end of the counter. Then the barest flick of his head before he turned his attention to detailing the banker’s cheque.

The branch manager was a dark-haired woman in her forties; she came to stand beside her cashier. “You’ve found yourself a new truck, have you, Joe?”

“For my truck, it’s for my truck.”

“Have you taken this one for a test drive?”

Joe nodded.

“Cos that one the other week, that didn’t turn out so well, did it?”

A sudden story unfolded itself. Pick-ups are ubiquitous out here – an essential component of many Canadians’ psyche, particularly the men. You can haul any amount of stuff in the back – lumber, furniture, camping gear, kayaks, dogs. High suspension allows for chunky tyres that can cope with dirt roads and logging tracks. Joe must have been feeling the loss of what might well have been a faithful old companion. But whatever condition had caused his perseveration was impairing his judgement when it came to a replacement. His bank had evidently been embroiled in unwinding at least one ill-advised purchase.

The Canadian banking system is in many respects even more technologically sophisticated than the UK’s. I manage my accounts from an app just like I did at home, but there is an e-transfer system that allows you to pay or receive amounts up to $3,000 by email. Yet the banks remain resolutely branch-based. Setting up accounts involved me in a succession of meetings with an adviser, and larger transactions interpose a human being who can satisfy themselves that there is nothing amiss.

It must be a difficult call, knowing when to intervene in a customer’s best interests. The manager asked Joe a couple more questions, but he went on his way clutching his banker’s cheque. She kept hold of the vendor’s details, though, I noticed. I wonder if a friendly phone call may have preceded his return to the dealer.

My own cheque was issued without demur. I left with the wherewithal to buy our Escape, and a renewed appreciation of the value of the local, personal touch.

[See also: How Britain lost the status game]