Canada Day (or for those of us old enough to remember, ‘Dominion Day’) is a time for us to celebrate our nation, whether we’re sitting by a campfire listening to loons, enjoying a gin and tonic on the back deck, or marching in a parade with all our flags flying. Here at the Fisher, we are marking our country’s birthday with a significant new acquisition – the 1867 Royal Proclamation ‘for uniting the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into one Dominion under the name of Canada’.

This broadside, printed in London, England, by Eyre and Spottiswoode, would have been hard to miss, measuring 101 by 63 centimetres. It is not just its size, however, which makes this broadside noteworthy. It is also the fact that it is the only known copy of the proclamation to have survived from beyond our borders, having been posted on 29 May 1867 at the Market Cross of Lanark, Scotland, by William Bryan Allan, Deputy Clerk of the shire. Copies, of course, were distributed throughout British North America in the months leading up to Confederation on July 1^st, but the Fisher broadside, with the detailed manuscript notes on the back in the hand of Mr Bryan himself (see image below; click on it for a larger view), is the only evidence we have that the notice of Confederation had actually been published in Great Britain. One can only wonder, in this nation of immigrants, which Scots, walking past the Market Cross of Lanark on a late spring morning, stopped to read it, and then decided it was time for them to cast their lot with building our national dream.

Happy Canada Day!

New acquisition: 1867 Royal Proclamation broadside