The Decibel - The multimillion-dollar fight over a piece of Canadian history

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

As the Hudson’s Bay Company continues to sell off what it owns to pay back creditors, a historic document has come up for sale. The Bay’s charter is its founding document, dating back to 1670, in which King Charles II gave the company exclusive trading rights over much of what would become Canada.Now the court is grappling with finding a process to sell this one-of-a-kind piece of Canadian history after an offer from Galen Weston and his family derailed plans for an auction. Susan Krashinsky Robertson explains how the sale of this document has raised a lot of questions about who gets to own history, who gets to decide and how some of Canada’s wealthiest families have expressed interest in buying it.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

When the Hudson's Bay Company shut its doors for good, it started selling off, well, everything. That included leases to their stores, its trademarks, and an important piece of history. So Hudson's Bay is selling its founding charter as part of the company's liquidation. Susan Krishinsky-Robertson has been covering the collapse of the bay. Its charter is old, like really old. older than Canada it dates back to 1670 What's interesting about this document too

is it physically shows its age a conservator told me that some years ago a well-meaning restorer tried to preserve the ink and applied a substance that actually resulted in its smudging a little bit so it's a little bit

more blurry than it used to be when it was written initially and that slightly blurry text essentially gave the bay exclusive of trading rights over a huge chunk of land. The Crown at the time basically used this very common colonial concept of essentially declaring this place in no man's land. Terra Nulius is the Latin term.

And without consulting or asking for the consent, of course, of the indigenous peoples who had lived and hunted and traded here for centuries. And it would have included all of what is now Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, parts of southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, and also parts of Ontario and Quebec. So just a really huge amount of land. The Bay has to sell this charter because it's under creditor protection, which means it has to sell everything it owns in order to pay back money it owes to various companies. But how do you price a truly one-of-a-kind piece of history? The charter is an extremely significant document in Canadian history.

We don't really have anything else that's quite as old or quite like it in Canada. And it's also a very fraught document because it symbolizes the beginning in some parts of this country, of the contact between European settlers and First Nations people. And so it's just an incredibly significant document with a very complex history. The News of the Sale has raised huge questions around who gets to own history and who gets to decide who gets to own it. And it's also generated competing bids from some of Canada's wealthiest families.

Today, Susan is on the show to explain. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Susan, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. And also welcome back to the other side of the desk, because listeners will know that you are also So filling in as a host, so thanks for holding down the fort.

Yeah, it's great to be back in the studio. So, Susan, to start, let's just talk about how you learned about the sale of this HBC charter. Yeah, so we have to rewind the clock all the way back to March. That's when Hudson's Bay filed for creditor protection in court and basically began the process of trying to determine what its future would look like, or as we now know, lack of a future. Unfortunately, the company was not able to find a plan to restructure its business and has, essentially fallen apart and is being sold off now for parts. So as that process began, I immediately started calling people trying to find sources who understood what was happening inside of the company, how we'd gotten to this point. And in late March, early April, I woke up one

morning to a text message from one of my sources who said, you might want to have a look at this. And what I opened up that they sent me was a confidential information memorandum, which was being circulated that had been prepared by Hudson's Bay that was basically giving an overview of all of its corporate assets. But a couple of slides really caught my attention, and they were describing an art and artifacts collection. And in those slides was a photo of this 1670 charter, which is obviously hugely significant document. And so what this memo was basically doing was laying out some of the assets that might eventually be for sale. So we wrote a story at the time, revealing that this memo had put the charter out there as an item that was possibly going to be for sale. And it created really a firestorm. I started hearing from people across cultural communities, historians, archivists, First Nations groups,

who were all extremely concerned about how this process was going to be handled. And what was the reaction from them? Just an incredible amount of concern because, of course, this document, the significance of it is almost unparalleled in Canadian history. And so there was a lot of concern about, you know, could this leave the country? Could this end up in private hands? You know, people were asking about how this was going to be preserved because it's a very fragile document. There was also concern about preserving access to it for historians, First Nations groups, anyone who might want to use it for research or access it for any other reasons. And so, There was a lot of talk about, you know, how is this sale going to be handled? Is this thing just going to be sold to the highest bidder? And who's going to be allowed to consult on how this all plays out? Now, it's important to say the company said right from the get-go that they were, quote, deeply mindful of the cultural significance of this collection, including the charter. And in fact, it was decided quite early on that any auctions that involved the assets of HBC were going to be done separately from the auction of the art. and artifacts, and specifically of the charter. That was basically set aside for a separate process to be decided upon. A fine art auction house was hired to handle that sale, so it was going to be handled by people with expertise in selling these kinds of items. And all along, they said that they were going to basically develop a process that was separate that was going to take into account

just how significant this item is. It's not just another asset to be sold. You mentioned access there, Susan. But what was access like to the charter before the sale came to light? Yeah. So Hudson's Bay actually kept this charter and displayed it in its own corporate offices in Toronto. And in that sense, it's also a unique item because most of the other historically significant things that Hudson's Bay owned were donated years ago. Back in the early 90s, there was a big donation of a number of artifacts from throughout its fur trading history think things like canoes, furs, art, carvings, all kinds of things, were donated to the Manitoba Museum, and then hundreds of years of corporate archives were donated to the archives of Manitoba.

So those things were already preserved, already separate from the company, and not subject to anything involving this creditor protection process, but the Bay held on to its charter as this founding document with sort of the understanding that probably eventually it was going to end up maybe in the archives of Manitoba or somewhere else. But they had held on to that one document for display in their own offices. And that's why the charter got caught up in this court supervised process. So this document obviously has a lot of historical value. But I guess I'm wondering, like, how do you value it in dollars? Yeah, that's a really good question. It's incredibly hard to figure out just how much something like this is worth because there's really nothing else like

it. So the memo that I told you about that we obtained compared it in value to the American Declaration of Independence. But even that's not a perfect comparison because of course there's more than one copy of the Declaration of Independence. And there's only one copy of this charter. That's right. Well, there are multiple Hudson's Bay charters that were produced over the years as it was amended, but there's only one original from 1670. And so this is a a one-of-a-kind document. And it's also important to note that over the years, values that were ascribed to other significant historical documents have varied really widely. There's a manuscript copy of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as an example. That's the amendment that

abolished slavery in that country and was signed by Abraham Lincoln. That was sold at auction for $13.7 million U.S. dollars back in June. But there's nothing really we can peg this to in terms of a direct comparison and also, you know, the values at auction really do fluctuate quite widely. What's definite about this, though, is that people with knowledge of this document really say it is something that is of great value. And what we've found out subsequently is that potential bidders for this document have come forward and said, we also think that that that this is of great value. So the dollar amount, it varies. But can we just take a minute to talk about why? Why would somebody want to buy this? Well, that's a great question. There are a couple of

reasons. So we'll talk in a moment about the potential buyers who have put up their hands. But as I was covering the preparations for this auction, I spoke with a couple of people. And really for the most part, what people told me is if they were considering stepping forward, it was because they wanted to donate it to an institution and make sure this stayed in Canada and in public hands. So there was a philanthropic aspect to this for sure. It's also important to note that donations of these kinds of significant artworks and artifacts to public institutions come with one of the most generous tax credits in Canada. And so there's that benefit to a potential buyer and donor as well. And then, of course, there is, you know, a public perception benefit. You know,

like any major donation, whenever someone puts their name on a building or creates a new wing of a hospital, there is some goodwill that's created by being associated with a donation of this magnitude and this level of significance. And so you could see why philanthropists of a certain level would be interested in maybe being the ones to step forward and say, we're going to ensure the preservation of this document. We're going to ensure it stays in public hands. And and in this country. But if this is so important to Canada's history, couldn't the government just take it? I guess I'm just wondering if there are rules around the sale of such a historically relevant item.

Yeah, so it's actually relatively rare for the government to just step in and buy a significant artwork or document like this just full stop. But there is a framework that governs the sale of these kinds of artifacts. So there's a law in Canada called the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, and that restricts the export of objects that are deemed of, quote, outstanding significance and national importance. And so when you see an item that meets that criteria sold, there are all kinds of strictures around, can that be taken out of the country? And if someone does apply for an export permit for an item like that, that can trigger. government funding for a museum to step in and say, no, this is nationally significant. We're going to buy this with the help of the government. But it's fair to assume that foreign buyers would be unlikely to step forward and try to bid for something like the charter because they'd be aware

that it would trigger all of these mechanisms and be very, very difficult to take out of the country. And so there are not ironclad rules that absolutely prevent something of national significance from being bought by a foreign buyer and even exported from Canada. But there are a number of roadblocks that are introduced. And certainly in a case like this, roadblocks that would have likely resulted in some alternative plan being reached to keep the charter here. We'll be right back. Okay, so historians, archivists, First Nation leaders, they all spoke about their concerns about the sale. What has been HBC's reaction to that? So from the start, Hudson's Bay said that they were, quote, deeply mindful of the cultural significance of this collection and that they were going to treat it with care, consideration, and expertise that was required for these pieces, including the charter. Behind the scenes, what sources have told me is that the financial advisors who are running this process had said to potential bidders that keeping the charter in Canada was actually going to be a requirement of any bid that was going to be considered a qualified bid.

And they were also told to sit tight, we're developing this process. The process itself was going to need court approval. They were going to have to present to the court how this sale was going to be carried out for a thumbs up. And so basically potential bidders were told when the auction proceeds, we'll be accepting bids, but we won't be accepting bids until we've gotten court approval and developed that process. There's a whole process happening before the auction goes ahead. But when can we expect it? Well, before that actually happened, some news broke. So at the end of July, the Canadian Museum of History announced that Canada's billionaire Weston family had reached an agreement to buy the charter. and to donate it to the museum. And so it emerged that the Weston family had agreed to pay $12.5 million for the document itself, which again would be immediately donated. And they had also committed to an additional $1 million donation to the museum to ensure consultation with other stakeholders, including First Nations groups, about how the charter should be presented, how it should be shared with other institutions potentially. And just ensuring that it had the funding for those consultations to make sure that there were other people at the table.

I think we should just take a moment here to acknowledge that this is a very prominent family in Canada of the Westons, right? Absolutely. And a very prominent family in Canadian retailing. This is a Canadian retail bankruptcy and another major retail family has stepped forward to do this. They're also a prominent family when it comes to philanthropy and particularly they have a long relationship with the Canadian Museum of History as well. At the time that the deal was announced, Galen Weston said in a statement that at a time when Canada is navigating profound challenges and seeking renewed unity, it is more important than ever that we hold fast to the symbols and stories that define us as a nation. He called the Royal Charter an important artifact within Canada's complex history and said that the family's goal was to preserve it with care, share it with integrity, and make it accessible to all Canadians. especially those whose histories are deeply intertwined with its legacy. That was his statement at the time. So how do people react to the West Indeal?

Yeah, the reaction was mixed. I'll start with Kira Wilson, Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. She had basically two reactions to this that she said to me. One of them was that she saw the West Indial as really a beautiful gesture for the country, you know, them making sure that this stayed in public hands. But she also expressed a concern to me about the respect to the First Nations who've been so deeply impacted by what this charter represents and what it wrought. And she asked, you know, why have we not been consulted on what happens with

that? Why is it that when issues like this are being discussed, they're told after the fact about a decision that's already been made? The other was concerned just generally around the transparency of this process. I spoke with more than one person across historical and archival sectors who basically said, why was this not transparent? How has this just deal come out of nowhere that has decided on where this extremely important document will end up? Why is it one bidder who gets to decide on that and not a consultative process that's more open? I spoke with, for example, someone from the Canadian Museums Association who said this process is not unfolded in an open and transparent way and hasn't left space for a collective decision, which is what cultural and

historic groups had been hoping for. And then, of course, there was a more specific concern about whether the Canadian Museum of History was the right place for the charter. Certainly, no one I spoke to questioned the caliber of that institution, but others had said, you know, there are a lot of people who object to the idea that this would be hived off from the rest of the archival collection and not end up in the archives of Manitoba, which holds the rest of those documents. There's archivists, they're very, very concerned with continuity of archives and making sure that an entire archive is held and stewarded by a single archival institution. That's a very important concept in that world. So they really wanted it with the Archives of Manitoba. The

Archives of Manitoba themselves wanted it. And people who were in support of that as a concept obviously pointed out that the Archives of Manitoba also has a long history of sharing documents, lending them out to other institutions. And so if the purpose of deciding on an institution was to make sure that this was kept in public hands, kept accessible, and maybe potentially toured around the country as long as that was possible, while also protecting the preservation of this document, that the Archives of Minnetoba would be the right place for that. You mentioned, though, that this bid actually kind of uprooted the auction plans. Can you explain why? Right. So the Weston's bid came, as I said, ahead of the development of this official auction process.

And actually, court documents revealed that in presenting their offer for the charter, the Westons urged the financial advisors who were overseeing the sale not to allow this to go up for bidding at auction. The court documents included a letter from the managing director of strategy for Whittington, which is the Weston's private family holding company, to the financial advisor and the court monitor overseeing the process. And in that letter, that executive suggested, Whittington might not actually be willing to participate in an auction process, which had initially been contemplated as part of the insolvency. And he wrote that given the historical significance of the document, Whittington, quote, was of the view that the charter belongs in the

museum and should not be the subject of a standard auction or commercial realization process. And it is not Whittington's intention to trigger one with this offer. So what immediately happened is that the court that is overseeing this whole process for Hudson's Bay set a hearing date to basically look at this offer. And what the court said is, we're going to establish a deadline. So they actually set a relatively long timeline. They set a hearing date for September 9th, that was going to be this week, and said, we're also going to set a deadline of August 21st. So anyone who wants to come forward to make any submissions on this at all, including anyone who might oppose this deal, they have until August 21st to make a submission with the court.

It makes me think about something in real estate where, you know, something goes up on the market and someone comes in and offers an amount and says take it or leave it and the person can take it. Yeah, it's known as a bully offer. Exactly. Is this kind of the same thing? It's not dissimilar. Yeah, they had basically stepped forward and said, this is our offer and we'd like to make this offer ahead of any open auction process. Yeah, it's a good way to think about it. Did anyone else make bids?

Right. So the reason that this is different from a real estate bully offer is that when you're selling a house, you don't have the Ontario Superior Court of Justice making decisions on whether the sale is proceeding correctly. So this is obviously a court supervised process. And so what happened was, of course, on August 21st, the day that they had set as the deadline for people to make submissions, Canadian businessman David Thompson stepped forward and said, actually, I would also like to be on the charter for donation to. an institution, a similar kind of structure of a bid as the Westons. But he had said he wants to donate it to the Archives of Manitoba, which of course is the institution that holds the rest of Hudson's Bay's vast trove of historical archives. And so this competing bid arose and that really complicated things because what it made clear was there are more than one interested bidder

here, at least two, possibly more. And also David Thompson in court documents, expressed the willingness to pay at least $15 million and possibly higher, depending on how an auction went, and his bid also would have included a $2 million donation to ensure consultation on how the charter was treated, whether it could be shared with other institutions, et cetera, also to consult with First Nations groups. And so this really introduced a new angle to this to say, you know, there's the possibility to recover more money here. And it's important to pause and say that while the charter is of great significance, it's also being sold as part of a process that is designed to generate funds to pay back at least some of what Hudson's Bay owes to its creditors.

Hudson's Bay went into creditor protection back in March with more than a billion dollars in debt. And a lot of those people who are owed money from the company are not going to be repaid in full. Some of them are not going to be repaid at all. And so this complicates what the court has to consider when it's thinking about this deal when you have another credible bidder who steps forward and says we might be willing to give more for this. With $2.5 million more. Yeah, it's not insignificant. And we should note, Susan, that David Thompson is part of another prominent Canadian family. That's right. And Mr. Thompson's offer for the charter comes through a DKRT Family Corporation. That's his personal family holding company. But of course, the Woodbridge Company Limited, another holding company and private investment vehicle for the Thompson family owns. the Globe and Mail. So what happens next? Well, we were supposed to go to court this week, and of course that's not happening now. The hearing that was set to consider whether to approve

the Weston deal has been adjourned. That news broke just late last week. That's been adjourned because a source familiar with the matter told me that the financial advisors handling the sale need more time to develop a process that's going to determine the fate of this document because of interest expressed by David Thompson in submitting a bid, but as well as interest from others, which really raise my eyebrows because that could mean that there are others out there who potentially have stepped forward and said we may participate in an auction process as well. So they basically have to go back to the drawing board

and figure out what it is that they're going to take to the court as the next steps for this document. And until they do that, the future of the charter is still up in the air. Well, Susan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. That was Susan Krasinski-Robertson, who covers Canada's retail sector for the Globe and Mail. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland.

Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.