Hudson’s Bay hearing to get charter auction approved adjourned over new bid

TORONTO – Another unsolicited bid for the royal charter that established the Hudson’s Bay Co. has emerged, adding a new complication to plans to auction off the historic document.

The company was due to ask the Ontario Superior Court on Monday to allow for the sale of the 1670 charter next month.

However, when the hearing got underway, Bay lawyer Ashley Taylor instead asked for an adjournment because of an offer the retailer received from an unidentified party Sunday around 11 p.m.

“There is some question about where it came from and how it was possible to bring it forward,” Taylor said before adding the retailer needs more time to “take a breath, think about next steps.”

Judge Peter Osborne approved the adjournment because “it’s frankly too important not to get this right.”

“I am concerned, and increasingly so, about the process and I am going to keep this on the rails,” he said before adjourning the hearing to Oct. 9.

The charter at the centre of the hearing is a five-page, parchment document signed by King Charles II about 355 years ago. It gave the Bay control over a large swath of the territory we now call Canada and also handed the company a fur trading monopoly and a key role in shaping Indigenous relations for decades to come.

The charter was housed in recent years at the Bay’s Toronto headquarters but was plunged into uncertainty in March, when the retailer filed for creditor protection under the weight of about $1 billion debt. It later closed all of its stores and moved the document into temporary storage, leaving the charter in need of a new, permanent home.

The auction protocol the Bay had planned to present to the court Monday would have required the winner of the sale to permanently donate the charter to a Canadian public institution or museum and present a letter proving they had one ready to accept the artifact. The institution would also have to promise to share the charter with similar organizations and Indigenous groups.

Anyone interested in vying for the charter would have had to signal their interest to the Bay’s financial advisor Reflect Advisors by Oct. 3. An auction would have followed on Oct. 15, with bidding starting at $15 million.

When the Bay first floated the idea of selling the charter through an auction hosted by Heffel Gallery, the plan instantly became a lightning rod for criticism from historians and archivists. They worried an auction would allow the document to wind up with a private collector who would keep it from public view.

But the Weston family of Loblaw Cos. Ltd. was intent on keeping that from happening. Over the summer, its holding company Wittington Investments Ltd. offered $12.5 million for the charter, which it planned to donate immediately and permanently to the Canadian Museum of History. It would also provide $1 million to the institution to care for and share the document.

The Bay was ready to accept the Westons’ offer and even scheduled a court appearance to get Osborne’s approval to move forward with the plan, but then, the holding company of media baron David Thomson emerged. 

DKRT Family Corp. said it had been awaiting the auction the Bay had talked about so it could bid at least $15 million for the charter. Its plan was to give the artifact – and a $2 million donation to help it be shared among institutions — to the Archives of Manitoba. (The Archives already hold most of the Bay’s collection thanks to a 1994 donation from the retailer.)

Interest from DKRT and others whom the Bay has never named caused the retailer to return to its original auction plan.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2025.