Donald Bowman suggests that a bare trust is not a trust

Former Chief Justice Bowman thinks that “a ‘bare trustee’ is an agent, not a trustee,” and that “no one can legally be a trustee and an agent at the same time,” so that the statement adopted in Trident Holdings that “a person may be both agent of and trustee for another,” was incorrect (although the same passage went on to acknowledge that in a bare trust “it is the agency relation that predominates.”) Accordingly, “judges, when faced with something called a ‘bare trustee’, have to make up their minds and decide which side of the line the entity falls on” and can’t say "maybe both".

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Donald G.H. Bowman, “Bare Trusts and Nominee Corporations,” Tax Topics (Wolters Kluwer), August 11, 2016, No. 2313, p. 1 under s. 104(1).