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Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
I consider myself an enthusiastic Canadian. I have an Inuit sculpture collection that I personally purchased while visiting Baker Lake, a small Nunavut community on an inlet of Hudson’s Bay. My collection of Canadian paintings also marks me as a patriot – and I felt this placed me in a good position to seek out and request a viewing of a legendary document: the original 1670 Hudson’s Bay Charter.
At the time of my search in the late 1990s, it was shrouded in mystery yet revered, like a mystical creature living somewhere in the bowels of corporate Canada, hidden to such an extent that its very existence could legitimately be called into question.
But not by me.
With a minimal amount of digging, I was able to ascertain where the great Royal charter – playfully described as Rupert’s Land, presented by King Charles II of England to the Hudson’s Bay Company, granting extensive land rights over a vast territory described as including lands where all waters flow into Hudson’s Bay – might be hiding. The document had been squirreled away in a myriad of Hudson Bay head offices located between Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal. Where should I begin? I couldn’t find anyone who had ever seen it, let alone requested a viewing or had knowledge of where it actually resided.
Since I lived in Toronto, I decided to walk to the Hudson’s Bay store at the corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets.
I left the retail area and entered the elevator lobby, half expecting to see signage directing pilgrims in the direction of the charter viewing gallery.
No such luck, so I looked for and found the building directory in hopes of locating the head office. Voila, there it was – located a number of floors above me. The golden path to a Canadian historic treasure was revealed. With all the gumption of a self-proclaimed historian, I boldly entered the elevator, pushed the floor button, and began the countdown to avail myself of whatever may happen next, with no real plan but to exude innocent curiosity.
I assumed you probably had to submit your name behind an endless list of credentials in order to make such a request to see the Royal document.
With much trepidation about being inappropriately dressed to enter the corporate world of suit attire while wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the elevator doors slowly parted.
The doors opened into a characterless reception room void of any robust notion of legacy retail or history; one woman sat behind an unwelcoming desk and scrutinized my audacity.
Obviously, I had stopped on the wrong floor.
“May I help you?”
“I am hoping to view the original Hudson’s Bay Charter,” I managed to squeak out.
I held my smile. After a forever moment, she stood, straightened her outfit, and said, “Follow me.”
With military precision, we headed down another nondescript hallway; three swift knocks on a door assured us that the room was vacant. We stepped into a timeless beige boardroom cramped by the logistics of an overly large table, behind which something on the wall was being hidden by a red velvet curtain with pull-string. The curtain could have been concealing a collection of dusty bowling trophies – such was the room’s pervading milieu of Nowheresville.
I dutifully followed to where I was told to stand, and the curtains were quasi-ceremoniously parted to reveal Canada in all its colonial history.
WOW. It was huge, spectacular, regal and my eyes feasted upon it. I inched closer to get a professional look at the patina, just to make sure it wasn’t a reproduction.
The charter was housed in a plexiglass box, presenting a mere four feet length of the parchment scroll; the rest lay unfurled on the bottom ledge of its sealed container.
“A most unregal home for the monumentality of the massive royal seal,” I thought. The seal was as big as an apple pie and made entirely of wax with a boldly impressed four-inch-deep impression announcing the royal prerogative. The swirling calligraphic first letter at the very top of the proclamation gave way to an elegant script representative of its near-ancient history. My eyes darted frantically as I tried to absorb as much history as possible before my two minutes were up.
I turned to my host and inquired, “When meetings are held in this room, are they obliged to open the curtains?”
“I’m not invited to the meetings in this room,” was her reply.
With that, the curtains were closed and we left.
I gave her a heartfelt “thank you” for allowing me to view such a treasure. On the way home, I considered returning with my camera (this viewing occured before cell phones) so I might take a picture of something I was already doubting I had actually seen. But I decided that would be pushing my luck.
Murray Ball lives in Toronto.
