by The Laird o’Thistle
November 15 2009

The just completed tour of Canada by the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall seems to have come equipped with all the traditional accouterments… from photo ops with Mounties and the Maple Leaf to contretemps over the Duchess wearing some recycled old family fur bits in the cold, to a minor separatist riot in Quebec. Camilla’s Canadian roots were also celebrated as she visited the home of her great-great-great-great-grandfather in Ontario. The press, both in Canada and Britain, has been full of speculation as to whether Canada is about “over” the monarchy, and whether Charles will ever replace his mother on the Canadian currency, etc. Business as usual, it seems.

The royal visit has made me curious to look back at Canada’s royal history. And in so doing I find that Canada may be able to claim “most favored” status among all the former British colonial possessions, with numerous royal ties stretching back to the eighteenth century. It also has a long history of loyalty to the Crown, stemming in many instances from the American “Loyalists” who moved north in the wake of the American Revolution. (Later Americans came north to escape black slavery, via the Underground Railroad, and then a century later to escape service in the Vietnam War. Nowadays they still come, often seeking the freedom to marry a same-sex partner and live a more socially and legally secure family life.)

The first royal visitors to emergent Canada came in conjunction with military service. In 1786 the future William IV was briefly there as a naval officer, followed by a much longer stint put in by his brother Edward, Duke of Kent (Queen Victoria’s father), who served as the commander of British forces in North America from 1791 to 1800. Kent took himself a Canadian mistress / common law wife during those years and is said to have left behind some officially illegitimate Canadian descendants. (George III’s sons had a penchant for not-quite-legal marriages and unrecognized long-term domestic partnerships.)

Despite Queen Victoria’s deep imprint on Canada, she herself never visited. But in 1860 the future Edward VII undertook the first official royal tour when he visited the Maritime Provinces and eastern Canada. At Ottawa, he laid the cornerstone of the Parliament Building. In 1867 the federal “Dominion” of Canada was created. The word “Dominion” was deliberately chosen in place of “Kingdom” for fear that the neighboring Americans would react badly to the latter term. Not long thereafter the first of three “royal” Governors General was appointed, Queen Victoria’s son-in-law the Marquis of Lorne (later 9th Duke of Argyll), who served from 1878-1883. Lorne’s vice-regal service proved ill-fated, as it was during their time in Canada that Princess Louise was gravely injured in a sleighing accident, and the couple’s marriage foundered in all but name.

In 1901 the new Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, the future George V and Queen Mary, made the first great transcontinental royal tour of Canada. (They had not yet been created Prince and Princess of Wales.) And although they never made it back to Canada, they sent family. From 1911 to 1916 King George’s uncle Arthur, HRH the Duke of Connaught served as Governor General. The Connaught’s daughter, Princess Patricia (later Lady Patricia Ramsay) was particularly popular in Canada, with “Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry” being named for her during World War I. Later, in 1919 and again in 1927, the Prince of Wales (later Duke of Windsor) made major tours and even bought himself a ranch in Alberta. (A recent article also indicated that there was some brief consideration of settling the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Canada during World War II.)

In 1939 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth became the first reigning King and Queen to visit Canada, crisscrossing the country. Queen Elizabeth paid several more visits in her years as Queen Mother, well into old age, and had a special relationship with the Canadian Black Watch just as she did with the original Scottish regiment. From 1940 to 1946 the last of the royal relations to serve as Governor General, the Earl of Athlone (brother of Queen Mary) and his wife Princess Alice (a granddaughter of Victoria), presided at Rideau Hall. Another sorrowful bit of royal history occurred during their term of service, the 1943 death of Alastair, Duke of Connaught , who was an aide-de-camp in the Athlone entourage. (Young Connaught, born in 1914, was the grandson of the old Duke and, via his mother, a great-grandson of King Edward VII.)

The current Queen made her first visit to Canada as Princess Elizabeth in 1951. She came again, as Queen, in 1957 and has made – if I counted correctly – twenty-one official visits to her North American realm. Those visits included the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, when the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed all the way through the Great Lakes to Chicago; and her visit to “patriate” the Canadian constitution in 1982. During her reign, Canada has adopted a new national anthem, “O Canada!” and a new national flag, the beautiful Maple Leaf banner.

In addition to HM the Queen, numerous additional visits have been made over the course of her reign by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales (currently up to 15 visits), Princes William and Harry (with their dad, shortly after Princess Diana’s death), the Queen’s three other children, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, and various of the royal cousins. Prince Andrew also studied briefly in Canada, got caught in an infamous skinny-dipping photo in Canada, and apparently was offered but refused a chance to serve as Governor General at some point during his marriage to Sarah Ferguson. Both Charles and Diana, and Andrew and Sarah, made rather splashy royal tours shortly after their respective marriages. And now, at last, Charles has brought Camilla.

So, what does the future hold? In the near term, it is expected that the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh will make another visit, age and health permitting, within the next few years. But such a visit will undoubtedly be much briefer and less strenuous than previously, and it may well be the last for the Queen. Beyond that, the role of the monarchy in Canada’s future is clearly unclear. Historically it has often been a part of Canada’s self-differentiation from its neighbor to the south, though nowadays the larger ongoing threat to Canadian national identity stems from Quebec rather than the U.S. In that regard constitutional inertia more than any other factor may preserve the Canadian monarchy for the foreseeable future. I’d like to imagine that part of Prince William’s training for future kingship could include a turn as Governor General… but that’s probably a fantasy at best.

In the meantime, I still hear that Victoria, BC, remains perhaps the most British city in the world outside of Great Britain. And, that high tea at the Empress Hotel there is the treat of a lifetime.

Yours Aye,
Ken Cuthbertson