Let the celebrations roll on!
For Canadians, Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday bash gives us a chance to marvel at how well the great lady still performs her highly traditional, strictly regulated routine. Her unstinting devotion to duty has become a shining hallmark of her remarkable reign.
We can pretty well conclude now that it was not just monarchial wallpaper wording when the Queen made that famous commitment on her 21st birthday in 1947, six years before her coronation, to devote her whole life “whether it be long or short … to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong”.
Of course, she could still hand off to Prince Charles and continue with her service but most observers note that Elizabeth is a traditionalist, in the mould of her father and grandfather, and such a move would be highly uncomfortable for her.
While the Queen may have eased herself and her husband, Prince Philip, into a kind of semi-retirement while handing off many duties to other family members, Her Majesty is still remarkably active and a great example for the increasing numbers of elderly everywhere. Since Queen Elizabeth has made 22 visits to this country, many Canadians will have memories of seeing her in person --- and earlier generations may recall seeing her parents from the historic royal tour of 1939, the first visit to Canada by a reigning monarch.
As a five year old, I remember being hoisted onto my father’s shoulders to wave to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later, the Queen Mother) as they waved back to us from the rear platform of a slow moving, bunting-bedecked train, making its way through my hometown of Stratford, Ontario. The cheers came in a rolling crescendo on that warm, bright spring day from well-wishers standing five and six deep all along the route.
It planted a seed in my impressionable young mind that we were part of a large and cozy family with the monarchy at its head and we were expected to help one another. The dark clouds of the Second World War were gathering in Europe and the King and Queen had come to openly rally support for the cause of helping Great Britain as it faced the menacing strength of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi war machine just across the channel in Europe.
Twenty years later, in 1959, I found myself again close-in to royalty in my adult role as an observer and media commentator during the extensive tour of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip that criss-crossed the country that year.
From a broadcast platform in Winnipeg, I described the scene in front of me in the suitably reverential tone used in those times. The crowds along the tree-lined streets toward the Manitoba legislature were large and enthusiastic with the cheers rolling through the still air on a hot day. They marked an appreciation of the shared history we had been through with them … from victory in the Great War to the baby boom and the more promising futures for millions.
Since then we have been part of more royal occasions together, including several subsequent visits to Canada, the two Jubilee anniversaries of the Queen and the sad and tumultuous story of Charles and Diana from their wedding through to the divorce and her stunning and untimely death.
The Queen’s family turmoil and subsequent adjustments to peace and tranquility may have mirrored the lives of our own family or friends and neighbours. And after Diana’s death, the Queen showed a lesson had been learned from the outrage felt by many members of the public regarding her perceived coldness in the hours after the tragedy. In a television address at the time, she displayed a warmer, more human and vulnerable side that has led to a more accessible monarchy.
Although the media still can’t interview her, Queen Elizabeth and the other royals have adjusted to the new realization that, like it or not, they are part of our more inter-connected world.
And so we arrive at 2016 with Queen Elizabeth still in place as Canada’s head of state, a position confirmed by a man and a government not always seen as friendly to the monarchy.
Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals understood when they brought our country’s constitution home from London in 1982 that the ties Canadians had developed with the monarchy were deeply bound into the moving tableau of our history. To break them would have been a traumatic and costly venture, not right for the times.
Not then, and not now.
Happy Birthday Your Majesty!
