Competition was fierce as banks raced to be the first in towns that were sprouting up in western Canada. The staff of the Vegreville, Alberta branch opened for business in an abandoned log and mud hut in September 1905. Not only did the hut act as a branch for the first two months, it was where the branch’s employees slept as well, and employees shared their sleeping bags with the garter snakes that moved in as the nights got colder. The branch soon moved from the mud hut to a homesteader cabin, and then to a pre-fabricated building in 1906.