When Canada turns 150: Time to get the BNA Act into Canadian hands, former archivist says

Randy Boswell, Postmedia News12.30.2012

Instead of sending Canada the originals of the British North America Act, the British government had impressive facsimiles reproduced on parchment of each of the six documents relating to our independence, which were placed in a large, hand-tooled leather box and presented to Canada as a gift.

The single most important document in Canadian history can be identified in a few different ways, but this is the rather inelegant alphanumeric designation that’s required to locate, observe and touch — under strict supervision, and only ever with white gloves — the nation’s birth certificate: HL/PO/PU/1/1867/30&31V1n5.

That’s the archival reference code for the original, 47-page, vellum version of the British North America Act — Canada’s founding constitution. It’s the agreement that was negotiated by Sir John A. Macdonald and the other Fathers of Confederation, passed by Britain’s Parliament and given royal assent by Queen Victoria on March 29, 1867.

Four months later, on July 1, 1867, the act came into force and the Dominion of Canada came into existence.

The piece of legislation from which all of modern Canadian history flows — from Sir John A.’s booze-fuelled dream of creating a transcontinental railway to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recognition of the “Québécois nation” to his landmark apology for past abuses of Canada’s aboriginal people — is kept at the Palace of Westminster, Britain’s parliamentary precinct in downtown London.

The BNA Act sits alongside three other acts passed that day in 1867 — one adjusting the licence fees for dog ownership in Britain; another confirming the validity of marriages performed by the British consul in Russia; a third establishing “Asylums for the Sick, Insane and other Classes of the Poor” — on a metal shelf in a cool, dark storeroom within the Victoria Tower section of the House of Lords.

“In exceptional cases, permission to view the original, under controlled conditions, will be granted by the Clerk of the Records,” states the entry for the BNA Act in the online catalogue of the Parliamentary Archives of the United Kingdom, known until a few years ago as the House of Lords Records Office.

“The document,” the entry further notes, “is also in a fragile condition.”

Over the years, a number of notable Canadians have suggested, lobbied and even demanded that the original, calfskin copy of the BNA Act — fragile or not — be plucked from the British repository and formally bestowed forever to Canada, the country it created more than 145 years ago.

The keepers of the document have politely but steadfastly refused, acknowledging Canada’s special interest in that particular artifact but stressing the importance of maintaining the integrity and completeness of Britain’s own historic parliamentary collection.

Time has silenced a number of the voices that once called for the BNA Act to come to Canada, including former federal Liberal cabinet minister Mitchell Sharp and Jean Pigott, the 1970s-era Conservative MP and later chair of the National Capital Commission.

Now, however, there’s rising hope of success for a new, two-year-old campaign to have the act rescued from overseas obscurity and displayed for the first time in this country in time for the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017.

The drive to lay claim to the document should gain fresh impetus from the recently announced creation of the new Canadian Museum of History, says Ian Wilson, chair of the Bring Back the Act campaign and former chief of Library and Archives Canada.

“That may be the appropriate venue,” he said. “There’s no point in bringing the act out of a storage vault at Westminster and simply putting it in a storage vault here. That’s not the intent. It’s to use it as the centrepiece in a discussion around the constitutional history of Canada and the continuing evolution of the Canadian constitution.”

Heritage Minister James Moore has drawn a mix of praise and criticism over his decision to transform the Canadian Museum of Civilization — located in Gatineau, Que., across the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill — into the Canadian Museum of History, its mandate more firmly fixed on representing notable people and events from the country’s past.

But it’s a change that could dovetail perfectly with the Bring Back the Act campaign, says Wilson, since a permanent exhibition on the evolution of Canada’s constitutional history would be a natural fit for the new institution — with the original BNA Act at the heart of the display.

Wilson envisions a hallowed space in which an array of original documents that constitute Canada’s legal foundations — including the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and various First Nations treaties, as well as the 1982 Constitution Act and associated Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — are exhibited alongside the authentic, patriated BNA Act.

Wilson himself organized just such a display in 2000, which was temporarily on view at the House of Commons but relied on a reproduction of the 1867 act that united New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the former province of Canada, which then split into Ontario and Quebec upon Confederation.

“It will be difficult for the British government to let this go — it would be an extraordinarily generous act,” Wilson acknowledges. “It goes against archival practice. But that document, in many senses, should belong to Canada.”

The renewed push to obtain it began in 2010, when Toronto-based publisher Lori Abittan, CEO of Multimedia Nova, launched the Bring Back the Act initiative as an offshoot of a series of essays, The Canadian Experience, produced under the editorship of historian Jack Granatstein.

“The Magna Carta is on display for all to see in England. The American Declaration of Independence is on display at the National Archives in Washington D.C.,” Abittan announced at the time. “But the British North America Act, a document no less important to the founding of Canada, remains in London, England. It’s time we fixed that.”

Granatstein, author of the influential book Who Killed Canadian History? and a former chairman of the Canadian War Museum, joined Wilson in offering high-profile support for the campaign, stating: “Having this most important icon from our history accessible here in our own country would have inestimable value in helping bring our history alive for Canadians.”

Granatstein is also a strong supporter of the revamped Canadian Museum of History, recently arguing that the country’s political history should form the backbone of the transformed institution. Meanwhile, Moore has hailed the museum makeover as Canada’s first major 150th anniversary project and earmarked $25 million to complete the job.

The capstone achievement for the new museum, Wilson insisted, would be winning possession of the original BNA Act. It could be showcased in a space that becomes not only a must-see attraction for any Canadian citizen visiting the national capital, but also a venue for annual lectures or conferences about Canada’s ongoing constitutional evolution — perhaps even for the discussion of controversial, contemporary issues such as the pros and cons of coalition government or the prorogation of Parliament.

The Bring Back the Act campaign recently won the support of retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci, who credits Canada’s constitutional documents with providing “the framework to create the civility, decency and enlightenment for which Canada is admired throughout the world.”

In a statement posted at the campaign website, Iacobucci describes the legal patriation of the Constitution in 1982 as a “magnificent moment in Canadian history” that should be matched by the physical patriation of the BNA Act, “so that it can also find its home in Canada. To celebrate that achievement in 2017 could not be a finer 150th birthday present for the people of Canada, including its future generations.”

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When Canada turns 150: Time to get the BNA Act into Canadian hands, former archivist says

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