‘Not meant to be’: Manitoba Museum reflects as Bay charter heads elsewhere

The Manitoba Museum has of the largest collections of Hudson’s Bay artifacts, but its CEO isn't bitter the defunct retailer's crown jewel isn’t destined for her institution.

The Manitoba Museum might have one of the largest collections of Hudson’s Bay artifacts, but its CEO isn’t bitter the defunct retailer’s crown jewel isn’t destined for her institution.

There will soon be a new home for the 355-year-old royal charter that birthed the Bay, giving it extraordinary control over a vast swath of unceded lands — and enormous influence over settlers’ early relations with Indigenous Peoples.

It will wind up at the Canadian Museum of History, pending court approval of a plan to let the Weston family buy the charter and donate it to the Gatineau, Que., organization.

“I’m glad that it has ended up at a museum. I think that’s important,” said Dorota Blumczynska, CEO of the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg.

“But I’m not going to sugarcoat the fact that we had certainly hoped that it would be in Manitoba and that it would be in the Manitoba Museum.”

The document became available after the Bay filed for creditor protection in March under the weight of tremendous debt. To recover whatever cash it could for creditors, it liquidated all of its stores and hatched a plan to put its most prized possessions — 1,700 art pieces and 2,700 artifacts — on the auction block.

Before an auction could begin, the Westons swooped in, pitching the Bay on a $12.5 million purchase and immediate donation of the document.

Prior to the announcement, historians and Indigenous communities were worried the charter would wind up on the wall of a deep-pocketed private collector, taking the historic document out of public view and perhaps, the country.