“Thank you for banking with us. We value your business and we’re there to help…” – from letter the Bank of Montreal has sent to its Thorold customers, informing them that their Thorold bank branch is going to close
A Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted January 5th, 2026 on Niagara At Large
Bank of Montreal plans to close its Thorold branch in Niagara at the cost of good service to its customers from front-line employees they know and trust. Those employees also expect to see their jobs disappear.
Don’t you just love these big, faceless corporations that tell you, the customer – almost always in a recorded or written message – that they “value your business.”
You hardly ever hear that from a smaller, locally owned business, and you know why? Because they actually value your business.
The last time I was fed this line was in a letter I received in the mail this past November from the Bank of Montreal, informing me that it plans to shut down, effective this coming April 2026, the branch of its bank at the Pine Street Plaza in Thorold where I and so many others in that community have been doing our banking business for most, if not all of our adult lives.
What that means is that there goes a branch of the bank and the jobs of all of the very good people that work in it just so that a giant bank corporation now bathing in quarterly net earnings of more than $2 billion can save what may amount to less money each year than its Chief Executive Officer shovels into his pockets every week.
But don’t worry dear customer, “we value your business” so much that ‘we are going to transfer your account(s) to one of our other branches’ a couple of kilometers away in St. Catharines.
And” if you have any questions, please call us” or come in to the Thorold branch this coming Thursday, January 8th, 2026 when a regional vice president for the bank will be there between 9;30 a.m. and 5 p.m. to answer any of your concerns.
There is no acknowledgement in any of this that many of us don’t do our business with the Bank of Montreal because we think it is somehow more special than any of the other banking institutions in Canada.
People don’t do their banking at BMC’s Thorold branch for this guy
We bank at this Thorold branch because we have always received great service from that it’s front-line workers that we have come to know and like on a first-name basis over the years and who we obviously care for more than the corporate generals in some far away office building that are so willing to ice their jobs.
In other words, we bank at this branch, not because this vice president who climbs down from higher rungs on the corporate latter to meet with us for a few minutes might be a nice guy or a good father to his kids. We bank there because of the connection we have with the branch’s frontline workers that the corporation he works obviously doesn’t understand that if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be doing business with his bank at all.
Many older folks in the community also bank there because they want to and, in some cases have to do their banking business at a branch that is close to home with real people that they have come to know and trust behind a counter, and not online or with a branch somewhere further away.
If the Bank Of Montreal follows through with this plan then I, for one, will be moving my finances to a nearby branch of the TD or Meridian Bank, not that I assume these banks are any better to people, but just to send the Bank Of Montreal a message that it can’t take my business they claim to value so much for granted
That’s what we all should do if we don’t like what a corporation we have dealing with is doing. Depriving them of our business and our money is the only thing they understand.
An Important Footnote – If you bank at the Bank of Montreal’s Thorold branch or have a close friend or relative that does, show up at it this coming Thursday, January 8th, 2026, any time between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and raise your concerns with the bank executive who will be there for the occasion. The branch is located at the Pine Plaza at 9 Pine Street North in Thorold
There is also a petition that is circulating online that you can sign that urges the Bank of Montreal to keep this local bank branch open. If you care to sign it, click on – Petition · Keep BMO Branch open in Thorold, Ontario. – Thorold, Canada · Change.org
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