About: Deed of Surrender

The Deed of Surrender or Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory Order is an 1870 British order in council that transferred ownership of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) to the newly created Dominion of Canada. The Deed ended just over 200 years of HBC control over the lands and began western Canadian expansion. While the Deed of Surrender was actually only a schedule in the order, the name "Deed of Surrender" is generally understood to refer to the document as a whole. Often confused with Rupert's Land Act 1868, the Deed is different as the Act only expressed that the United Kingdom and Canada permitted the transfer, but did not settle on the details of exchange with HBC, which were outlined in the Deed of Surrender.