I saw the Magna Carta yesterday.
The Durham Cathedral copy is making a tour of Canada, so I took the opportunity to see an important historical artifact and the foundation of the modern legal system.
The Federal Building near the legislature has been under construction/renovations for several years. And this was my first time even going to the area for probably five years. I must say it looks very nice. The living wall is a nice touch to have during the winter months.
Since I was on time, but we were waiting for people who weren’t, we checked out the 4D interactive movie about the history of Alberta. It was fairly well done with nice special effects. I got snowed on at one point. And it has the closest we are going to get to holograms with modern technology.
Anyway, the exhibit on the Magna Carta was good. I found the best part was just listening to the curator talk about the document and answer questions. The actual document isn’t that spectacular until you know the facts. It is in abbreviated Latin, so it wasn’t very approachable for the common man. The curator also had speculations about Scribe “Bob” who is the speculated pseudonym of the scribe who wrote out this draft. “Bob” started out with big writing, but two thirds of the way through, realized he was running out of space. He started crunching in the words tightly and made them smaller. (Sounded like a high school student.) You can’t move on to another sheet of paper or write on the back.
The accompanying document, “The Charter of the Forest” actual sounds more important. The Magna Carta is for the nobility. The Charter of the Forest is for the common people and starts to give them human rights.
I would recommend going.