By Tara Deschamps Two of Canada’s wealthiest families have cleared the final hurdle on the road to buying and donating the royal charter that created the Hudson’s Bay Co. Ontario Superior Court Judge Peter Osborne gave the shuttered retailer permission Thursday to sell the 355-year-old document to holding companies belonging to the Thomson and Weston families for $18 million. The families plan to donate the charter immediately and permanently to the Archives of Manitoba, the Manitoba Museum, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., and the Royal Ontario Museum. Each of the organizations has already agreed to accept the charter, which was issued by King Charles II on May 2, 1670 and allowed for the creation of HBC, which was then a fur-trading business. The five-page vellum document was…
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