If you've been with your bank for a while and they know you, you might get away with not having it held.
If not, sometimes you have to 'prove' yourself to the bank....so a few held checks at the beginning, and then they generally won't hold it anymore.
Mine were never held because I had been with my bank for quite some time and do pretty much all my banking through them from loans to rrsp's etc...
I have this problem now that I moved to the interior and had to open a new account here. All my small checks are fine for deposit here, but my big ones are still sent down to Vancouver to my old bank who cashes them just fine.
