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Canada’s Elizabethan Jubilee Reflections on the Queen of Canada
by Jacques Monet
 In the evening of her Coronation day, June 2, 1953 the Queen spoke to all of us by radio. The morning's glorious ceremony, she said, was "not the symbol of a power and a splendour that are gone, but a declaration of our hopes for the future." Later, in Ottawa on October 13, 1957, as she was about to confirm her title as Queen of Canada at the most solemn moment of our national life, she returned to that theme by recalling the words of the first Queen Elizabeth: "Though God has raised me high, yet this I count as the glory of my Crown, that I have reigned with your loves. And now in the New World I say to you that it is my wish that in the years before me I may so reign in Canada, and be so remembered." Elizabeth II is the 32nd Sovereign in recorded history to reign over this realm now called Canada, but in fact she is the first to be proclaimed explicitly as "Supreme Liege Lady in and over Canada" and the first to bear the title "Queen of Canada." In this year celebrating her Golden Jubilee - a time apt and suitable for reflection - thoughts crowd in about how she and all of us Canadians have given meaning to her new title. Most striking at first has been the increased frequency of Her Majesty's physical presence in Canada. Most of her predecessors remained abroad in Britain or in France. Some, like William IV, George V, and Edward VIII, came several times as Princes; Edward VII made the first official grand tour in 1860 as Prince of Wales; Queen Victoria, whose name Canadians gave to dozens of streets, avenues and parks, towns, villages and bridges, not to mention hospitals, hotels and Universities, never came at all; George VI, unforgettably, came as Sovereign in 1939. The Queen, for her part in addition to the six weeks she spent travelling across Canada as a Princess in the fall of 1951, has been here for extended time on eighteen separate occasions since, longer than she has been in any country other than her natal Britain. She has visited every part of Canada: the outposts of Labrador, the North West Territories and Northern Ontario as well as the inner cities; she has stood on the lookout of mountains and gone down deep into mines; she has attended church services and sporting events, concerts and convocations, picnics, jamborees, and pow-wows; she has gone in person to comfort Canadians in hospitals and senior citizens' homes, or to encourage others in industrial projects, youth clubs, and French immersions schools. She has, in fact, come into personal contact with more Canadians of every language, race, colour, and creed than any other single person. As she boasted quite candidly in Edmonton during one of her stays there: "I am getting to know our country rather well." That, yes. But as well the Queen of Canada was giving life and reality to her definition of the Crown expressed in her Christmas Broadcast to us in 1953: "The Crown is not merely and abstract symbol of our unity, but a personal and living bond between you and me." Impressive too, perhaps even more than by the Royal visits, is the strengthening of that bond by Her Majesty's agreement after 1957 to continue appointing Canadians as Governor General. A few weeks after the Queen's accession, the Rt. Hon. Vincent Massey was installed as Governor General, the first Canadian in modern times to be so appointed. Since then, eight more Canadians have followed, each one contributing to bring out different facets of the Crown's Canadian reality. In addition to Vincent Massey's untiring efforts in the promotion of our identity, the Crown has thus been enriched by General Vanier's gentle and abiding religious conviction as well as by his interest in the quality of family life; by Roland Michener's emphasis on the contribution of young people and physical fitness; by the strength of spirit displayed by Jules Léger and his unfailing faith in the future of Canada. So it has also by Mr Schreyer's and Mr. Hnatyshyn's encouragement of the country's diverse and growing cultural communities, by Jeanne Sauvé's commitment to national unity and world peace, as well as by Mr. LeBlanc's support of the First Nations and by Her Excellency Madame Clarkson's deep involvement in and love for Canadian Art. The Canadian monarchy is an institution complex in its variety and role. It is not, as in other monarchies, supported by an aristocracy nor represented locally by the activities of a royal family. It functions instead, in addition to the Sovereign's "homecomings", through the activities both of the Governor General who represents it fully by right of appointment and through those of the Lieutenant Governors, who by derivation exercise specific aspects of its sovereignty, each a sign of particular loyalties in their local, historic, evolving character. Taken distinctly one from the other, each one would proffer an incomplete, partial, false image of Canadians. Together, in their relations one to another as a kind of corporate personality, they reflect the reality of our country, too various to be symbolised by a single person, too rich to be contained in a single symbol - other than in the Canadian Crown. The successive appointments of distinguished Canadians to the Governor Generalship have had a cumulative effect. After fifty years not only have they raised the profile of the office by incorporating into it the genuine contribution of Canadians together with the Queen, but they have given the Canadian Crown a new and different Canadian significance. So, likewise, has the Queen's prompting the governors to dialogue regularly with the Prime Minister. Indeed since General Vanier's day the Governor General has met regularly with the leader of the Government; and more frequently than ever before. A study of the agendas of the Governors General since the 1950s reveals that until 1963 Prime Ministers seldom went for meetings and conversations at Rideau Hall. Between 1955 and 1963, for example, the number never reached more than five times a year, including such necessary visits as those made to advise a dissolution of Parliament. In one year, 1960, there is no record of a single visit from the Prime Minister. But after March 1963, the number of visits reaches a dozen; and afterwards it reaches an average of eighteen to twenty a year. Since the 1980s the average has varied up and down, but it has consistently remained higher then in the early 1970s. For Jules Léger, as he once confided, this ongoing dialogue is the richest and most rewarding experience for the Governor General. For other observers the increased frequency in exercising the Governor's "right to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn" has certainly allowed the representatives of the Canadian Crown to play a more consequent role in the practice of government than ever since Confederation. So, likewise has the new Canadian system of Honours and Decorations. When the Queen approved the creation of the Orders of Canada and of Military Merit in 1967 and in 1972 respectively, she gave the Governor General new responsibilities. He became Chancellor of each Order and the chancelleries were deliberately located at Rideau Hall, as was the whole Directorate of the Canadian System of Honours, which, by 1996 included the immensely popular Governor General's Caring Canadian Award founded by Mr. LeBlanc. The consultative committees meet there regularly ever since and the Canadian system of Honours has remained over the years one of the few of its kind in the world to be entirely free of partisan patronage and influence. The Crown, as the Fountain of Honour, acquired a new radiance and a distinctly Canadian meaning. In 1988, the Queen also authorized Jeanne Sauvé to create the Canadian Heraldic Authority, again with the Governor General at its head, and as for the System of Honours, with a Directorate at Rideau Hall. Since then, thousands of communities, schools, churches, and associations of every kind - not to mention individual Canadian men and women from all parts of the country - have petitioned for and been granted the honour of coats of arms that link them directly with new heraldic Canadian symbols. Likewise since 1952, it is Canadian artists who have been asked to give expression to many other signs and symbols that are traditionally associated with the Crown. For the first time, the new Sovereign's Great Seal of Canada was designed in Canada by Eric Aldwinckle; her state portrait was painted by Lilias Newton of Montreal, and in 1976 another one was commissioned from Jean-Paul Lemieux. The Queen took the initiative in adopting a distinctly Canadian Royal Standard, and over the years Canadian photographers such as Yousuf Karsh, Cavouk, Donald McKague, John Evans, and Bryan Adams have been asked when need arises for formal portraits of her for use in Canada. More than Her Majesty's frequent presence in Canada, or even more than the evolution in the Governor Generalship and the Canadian system of honours, these many signs and symbols of the Crown have become frequent, if not daily, reminders of Her Majesty's Canadian title. Her Majesty has also been sensitive to exercise her constitutional prerogatives in the context of our evolving Canadian reality - one that especially through the decades of the 1960s to the 1990s was becoming heady. The Quiet Revolution was steadily rumbling less quiet as Québécois questioned their every traditional institution, most notably their being Canadian. Acadians, for their part, were rising to new life. Across the country Canadians were feeling stronger and more assertive, as they focussed on celebrating the achievements of Confederation's hundred years, while thousands upon thousands of newcomers were producing across the nation increasingly vibrant cultural communities that were not those of the "two founding nations". The character of the Queen's Canadian people was changing radically and rapidly. In this context, was the Crown not an intolerable reminder of our colonial past? A nagging symbol of British privileged hegemony in Canada? A threat to national unity? From the start, the Queen made it clear that she wanted the Crown to remain above the differences dividing us. During a very tense visit to Quebec in October 1964, she spoke very directly: "The role of a constitutional monarchy is to personify the democratic state... and to guarantee the execution of the people's will. My ardent wish is that no one among my peoples suffer constraint." Later, in 1973, in Toronto, the most multicultural of Canadian cities, she reiterated: "I want the Crown to be seen as a symbol of national sovereignty belonging to all. It is... a link between Canadian citizens of every national origin and ancestry." Accordingly during these years she gave particular attention to three specific questions. One, in 1977, was the transfer to the Governor General of the duty of signing in her name the Letters of Credence for Canadian representatives abroad. The issue had come up before in the 1960s, but had been set aside. The Queen's Jubilee visit to Ottawa in October 1977 provided an opportunity for more and direct conversations, this time in a new context, with Governor General Léger and Prime Minister Trudeau. All agreed on the timing of this "patriation" for later in December. Another issue, within a year, was that of the proposals for reform, constitutional change, and a Charter of Rights, put forward by the Trudeau Government. In June 1978 the Prime Minister asked the Ministers of Justice and External Affairs to lay the proposals before the Queen. A few weeks later, during her visit to the Commonwealth games in Edmonton, she held further discussions with the Prime Minister, and was quite happily satisfied that nothing essential would be changed in the Crown's role in the Canadian Constitution. Later, in August, as strong public opposition was growing against the proposals in some quarters, she agreed to the very unusual step of allowing the publication of her private secretary's letter containing her reaction to the Ministers' visits. Eventually, for a variety of reasons, the proposals were dropped. Later, commenting on these events, Jules Léger wrote: "I wonder whether any sovereign was ever so directly informed and consulted by a Canadian Prime Minister. In any event, during my term of office, each one of the Queen's visits and the several meetings of Commonwealth Prime Ministers... made possible a continuous personal exchange of information and views between Her Majesty, the Prime Minister, and the Governor General. These personal communications made consensus rather easy whenever a decision had to be taken on any matter of common interest. And it is this practice which, I believe allowed Her Majesty to play a real part in the government of Canada." The third issue was the process and eventual patriation of the Constitution. Beginning after the referendum in Quebec in 1980, the political negotiations were difficult and dramatic. They eventually involved the Supreme Court as well as the British and ten Provincial governments. The Queen carefully followed unfolding developments both in Canada and in Britain, until on 29 March 1982, in London, she gave Royal Assent to the Canada Act - the last time a British Parliament would legislate for Canada. Then on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on 17 April 1972 she proclaimed our new Constitution, removing the last vestige of Canada's former colonial status. Her Majesty's title as Queen of Canada had attained its full constitutional reality. It no longer rested in a British document, left as an anomaly in our Canadian polity. The Crown was now - at the end of a process in which she had fully and personally taken an important part, - enshrined along with a Charter of Rights in the heart of Canada's fundamental law... as already its separate Canadian identity had grown since the beginning of her reign informing as a first principle our honours, our government and our allegiance. The patriation in 1982 did nothing to diminish the Sovereign's position or the exercise of her powers and prerogatives by the Governor General. If anything, patriation strengthened the Crown since it entrenched the office of the Queen, of the Governor General and of the Lieutenant Governors, they being amendable now only by the unanimous consent of all the provinces and the Federal Parliament. Her Majesty remains at the head of the State, the living symbol of the roots and continuity of our country and of our institutions; of the values we hold in common and those that are our permanent ideals. She is there to remind us of the principles according to which we Canadians understand our government should be conducted, how the powers of the state should be arranged for our safety and protection. Without the Queen of Canada, without the sacredness and otherness of royalty, without her articulating the importance of the spiritual dimension in people's lives, the office of the Governor General (to whom in fact her constitutional powers and prerogatives have been transferred) and that of the Lieutenant Governors would be seriously weakened. She is the one entrusted with the conscience of the nation: "The greatest problem in the world today," she told us, for instance, at Christmas 1983, "remains the gap between rich and poor countries, and we shall not begin to close this gap until we hear less about nationalism and more about interdependence." Through the years Her Majesty has earned enormous respect and admiration throughout the Commonwealth and worldwide as a person. Deservedly, given her unwavering devotion, dignity, and sense of duty. In the Commonwealth she has intervened discreetly and sensitively at several critical times - during the Suez Crisis in 1957, for instance; or in Ottawa in 1973 at the first meeting of the Heads of Government she attended (at the pressing invitation of Prime Minister Trudeau), or again in Lusaka in 1979 over Rhodesia and sanctions against South Africa. For fifty years she has accomplished the truly exceptional feat of retaining the esteem and loyalty of the leaders of every state, each so different in personality and culture one from the other. She has the stature of an internationally acclaimed personage. She is the senior and most experienced Head of State in the world, well known for the ideals she inspires and well loved because she lives by them: dedication and duty, grace and honour, service and respect for the rights of others. For us in Canada, she means even more. As our 32nd Sovereign she carries into our time the long and proud heritage of the Kings and Queens whose first heralds in this land were John Cabot and Jacques Cartier; who commissioned the discoverers, encouraged the settlers and rewarded the Loyalists; who, again, proclaimed the rights of the First Nations, chartered the law and religion of French Canada, and sanctioned the practice of democratic and responsible government. And as our Queen for fifty years she has become personally a precious part of our best memories. She has been Sovereign during these two generations when we have made Canada become more multicultural, more prosperous and more self-confident as a nation. She was here to celebrate her accession with us on that glorious Thanksgiving in '57, she was here to share our pride in the achievement of the St. Lawrence Seaway, again in the projects of the Centennial and in the joy of Expo '67. She strengthened our Sovereignty in the Arctic when it was challenged in 1970; then when the leaders of the Commonwealth came here, she took up residence in Ottawa and later in Victoria. When the whole world followed for the Montreal Olympics, she was here to welcome them with us, as she was to celebrate with us the patriation of the Constitution, and then the 125th anniversary of Confederation. In her Jubilee year, she will be here again to remind us of the precious promises that lie within our heritage. No wonder, the eight-year-old little girl who was pulled out at random from a crowd waiting for the Queen on her last visit to be asked: "What does the Queen do?" blurted out quite spontaneously: "She comes to make us happy." That would be enough. But in fact Her Majesty does much more than that. Of all major peoples in the new world, we are the only one who have not violently rejected our links with Europe. We have freely and deliberately chosen to maintain a strong attachment to all our countries of origin. The Crown manifests this very clearly. The Queen of Canada is entirely ours. For fifty years now she has been giving meaning to her title: by her visits; by her involvement in the great events of our national life; by her concern that her Canadian powers and prerogatives be exercised in Canada and by Canadians. For 50 years at crucial stages in our national evolution she has kept reminding us of the centrality of sacrifice and tolerance, of the courage and faith that will keep Canada together. In 1990 at a time when we were at our worst - angry, bigoted, ignorant, revengeful, selfish, stubborn... - she prompted: "I am not just a fair-weather friend and I am glad to be here at this sensitive time... there is in Canada, and about Canadians a constant search for fairness, a receptiveness to honourable accommodation, enabling the two principal language communities to flourish within the Canadian family. Those values are needed now, more than ever. I cannot believe that Canadians will not be able... to find a way through present difficulties." Two years later, while serious divisions continued, she reiterated: "You have inherited a country uniquely worth preserving. I call on you all to cherish this inheritance and protect it with all your strength." But the Queen of Canada is not ours alone. And so she manifests as well the historic and current attachment of all Canadians to their origins overseas. In this her Jubilee year our allegiance to her expresses as well this reaching out beyond our borders to sisters and brothers everywhere, as it does our happy realization she has truly fulfilled the wish she had expressed in Toronto thirty years ago: "I want the Crown in Canada to represent everything that is best and most admired in the Canadian ideal. I will continue to make it so during my lifetime." "I hope", she had concluded then, "you will all continue to give me your help in this task." We will, M'am . . . and thank you...  |
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