Month: May 2022

Those of us who were on the royal tour in the spring of 2005 to celebrate the centenaries of Saskatchewan and Alberta remember the rain, the whipping wind and the plunging temperatures — but also the “stiff upper lip” of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Queen and Prince Philip were coming first to Regina for the unveiling of a statue on the grounds of the legislature to honour Burmese, a horse she rode for 18 years. Burmese, a filly, was not only the Queen’s favourite horse, but a local celebrity, having been bred at Maple Creek, west of the provincial capital. She had been given as a gift to the Queen in 1969, when the RCMP Musical Ride was performing in the United Kingdom.

The Mounties, of course, wanted the outdoor event to go off without a hitch. They had even done a dry run with the horse-drawn landau that would take the Royal couple to the Queen Elizabeth II Gardens by the Legislative Building, where the magnificent sculpture by Susan Velder was waiting to be unveiled in the newly named gardens. Knowing rain was certainly in the forecast, they did the dry run with the top up for protection.

The Queen would have none of it. “No, no, no,” she told the Mounties when she and Philip arrived at the start of the procession. “Top down.”

The people, many of them schoolchildren waving tiny flags, had come expecting to see their Queen, and see her they would. She would, as always, do her duty.

At 79, in 2005, she was still very much the 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth who stood in front of a crowd in South Africa and announced, “It is very simple. I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it is long or short, shall be devoted to your service.”

Five years later she was Queen. On February 6 of this year, she marked 70 years as Monarch, her life far, far more long than short.

The day after the unveiling of the statue to her beloved Burmese, she was off to the RCMP training centre where she and Philip would lay wreaths to honour the 207 men and women who had been killed in the world’s most recognizable policing uniform. Some 600 veterans, officers and cadets were assembled on the parade grounds to be inspected by the Royal couple, the inspections often including long conversations on where they were from and how long they had served or expected to serve.

The Royal couple also met privately with the families of four young Mounties who had been slain in early March just outside Mayerthorpe in northwest Alberta. The shooter then took his own life.

The Royals and families gathered in the little white chapel just off the parade grounds to honour the memories of Leo Johnston, 32, Anthony Gordon, 28, Peter Schiemann, 25, and Brock Myrol, 29. Myrol had been on the job only two weeks; his family had been here only a short time earlier to celebrate with him, now to mourn.

Kim Gordon was pregnant with a child due in July and had already decided to name the arriving boy Anthony, after her lost husband. Anthony had been called in on his day off. As she recounted, “When they called him in, he did not grumble. He simply said, ‘I’m on my way.’”

Duty — the permanent bond between the monarchy and the Canadian Mounties.

It is a heartfelt connection that stretches back to the 19th century, when Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier approved a plan to send 25 members of the North-West Mounted Police and 28 horses to Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in England. Commissioner Lawrence Herchmer was so determined his men looked sharp that he ordered up a new uniform that combined a Stetson hat with red serge, thereby guaranteeing the Canadian “Mounties” instant recognition forever after.

It was King Edward VII who granted the prefix “Royal” in 1904 in recognition of their service in the Boer War, from which they returned with the equally recognizable “Strathcona” boots.

No monarch has so loved Mounties — and, by extension, horses — more than Elizabeth II. They attended all her formal celebrations; she never failed to pay special attention to them during reviews on any royal tour of Canada, the 2005 visit being her 21st.

In 1973, on the 100th anniversary of the force’s founding, she had also been in Regina, at this same parade ground. It was a time in which the RCMP was undergoing considerable criticism for its treatment of Indigenous Peoples and its wiretapping operations of university activists.

“I particularly value your close association with my family,” Queen Elizabeth told the gathering. “The force has been represented at every coronation since King Edward VII’s, and I well remember the splendid detachment at my own coronation.”

She would also never forget Burmese, the coal black filly from Saskatchewan. She had, after all, been aboard Burmese that alarming day in 1986 when, at a Trooping the Colour ceremony along the mall, a disturbed young man ran up and fired six blank shots at her. Both horse and rider flinched, but both quickly recovered and carried on.

Both simply doing their duty.

Journalist and author Roy MacGregor covered the 2005 royal tour for The Globe and Mail.

I am Cree and Nakota, from the Little Black Bear First Nation in Saskatchewan. Like most of you, I am also a Treaty person.

Treaty 4 territory is a place of incredible beauty. The Qu’Appelle River — the kah-tep-was in Cree — has cut deeply into the earth as it winds among grassy hills. In Cree tradition, all the creatures who walk, crawl, swim or fly over this land are our relations.

Little Black Bear entered into treaty with the British Crown almost 150 years ago as the young nation of Canada was expanding westward. We consecrated Treaty 4 with ceremony because we understood that the treaty was more than just an agreement: it was a sacred covenant that would last “as long as the sun shines, the waters flow and the grass grows.”

Queen Victoria, the embodiment of the Crown, was our treaty partner. When Treaty 4 was concluded, Canada gifted our leaders with medallions. These medallions were visual representations of that covenant. On one face was a portrait of the Queen.

The other face of the Treaty medallion shows two men clasping hands. One is First Nations and the other is European. At their feet you see a buried hatchet. There was no conquest. Our treaty is a commitment to peace and friendship between equals. Behind the two figures, our tipis stretch to the horizon. There are no fences. The Crown was confirming that we would continue to live on the land according to our traditions and without interference.

While I’m talking specifically about Treaty 4, a similar spirit and intent informed treaty-making right across this land, from the earliest peace and friendship treaties with the Mi’kmaw and the Wolastoqey on the East Coast through to the often-overlooked Douglas Treaties on Vancouver Island. The Crown entered into more than 70 treaties with First Nations before 1923. In every case, our people saw the treaty process as an affirmation that we would live alongside our new neighbours on the basis of mutual respect and reciprocity.

For Indigenous Peoples, the treaties are still very much alive. That is why we continue to say to our non-Indigenous neighbours, “We are all Treaty people.”

However, we also know that the original spirit and intent of the treaties was quickly betrayed. Even as it negotiated Treaty 4, Canada was implementing repressive laws that confined First Nations to tiny reserves, overthrew our traditional structures of government and tore First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from their families and cultures. There was no respect and no reciprocity.

Indigenous Peoples in Canada today live with the consequences of that betrayal.

A 2019 research report prepared for the federal government applied the UN Human Development Index to the situation of First Nations in Canada. The index assesses fundamental indicators of health, well-being and economic security such as life expectancy, income and education. While the index ranks Canada as the world’s 12th wealthiest country, this study ranked First Nations reserves fully 66 places behind the rest of Canada and below Albania and Mexico.

For me, the causes are obvious. Indigenous Peoples have been denied control over our own lives. We do not have a sufficient, healthy land base for our traditional economies to thrive. Rights protected by treaties, the Constitution and international law are routinely swept aside. We face systemic discrimination regarding access to services that other people in Canada take for granted. The wounds of horrendous human rights violations like the residential school system have never been healed.

The point I want to emphasize is that none of this was meant to be. None of these things would have happened if the treaty relationship had been honoured.

I also want to be clear that — despite the terrible wrongs we have endured — Indigenous Peoples remain strong and resilient. We have kept our cultures and traditions alive. We have developed innovative ways to meet the needs of isolated communities and to protect fragile ecosystems. And we have never given up on the original intent and spirit of our treaties.

Today, I see cause for hope. Hard-fought legal battles have affirmed our inherent rights, title and jurisdiction. The courts have said that the “honour of the Crown” is not a mere abstraction: it has legal consequences requiring, among other things, honouring the original spirit and intent of our treaties. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission kindled a profound national desire for a new relationship with Indigenous Peoples. And the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — a victory more than two decades in the making — establishes a principled foundation and legal standard for that relationship.

We are living at a time of profound change in Canada. I have seen this for myself in the negotiations we have with government and industry and in the conversations we have with our neighbours. Without a doubt, we still have a long way to go: newspaper headlines confirm that every day. But we are making tremendous strides. First Nations continue to say, “We are all Treaty people.” Let this be the generation where the treaty promise of mutual respect and reciprocity is turned into reality.

Chief Perry Bellegarde served as National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations from 2014 to 2021 and is the Honorary President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

The story goes that to honour the coronation of Canada’s new monarch in 1953, Arctic explorer Lt.-Col. Patrick Baird suggested that a peak that soared over Pangnirtung on Baffin Island be named Mount Queen Elizabeth. But, on further review, the proposal was turned down: in the estimation of Governor General Vincent Massey, it was said, the mountain wasn’t quite mighty enough.

That’s not to say Canada’s new Queen went uncommemorated in northern Canadian geography: Baird’s recommendations for naming Corona­tion Fiord and Coronation Glacier did go ahead in ’53. That June, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent’s government announced a token of toponymic respect befitting the occasion, introducing Alberta’s new Queen Elizabeth Ranges, comprising 15 mountain peaks around Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park, the tallest of which, Mount Unwin, climbs beyond 3,200 metres.

“Enough beauty has gone into the composition of this area to make a dozen regions famous,” said Robert Winters, Canada’s minister of resourc­es at the time. In this case, it was the Queen herself who approved the naming proposal.

Seventy years later, the year of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, her reign and the bonds she’s forged with Canadians continue to be reflected across the map of Canada.

Canada’s record of regal naming has been steady throughout her reign, according to Connie Wyatt Anderson, chair of the Geographical Names Board of Canada. While the practical business of naming geographical features — toponymy — falls within the purview of individual provinces and territories, the federal names board acts as a coordinating body providing oversight and resources. It maintains a database of 360,000 named geographical features across the country, from straits and inlets to pingos and prairies, rivers and gulches to brandies and seamounts.

In the Queen’s case, the Albertan ranges in 1953 were followed by an Arctic archipelago in 1954. Originally (and for 130 years prior) named for Arctic explorer William Parry, the Queen Elizabeth Islands are Canada’s northernmost cluster, and include Ellesmere (Umingmak Nuna), Devon (Tallurutit) and Cornwallis islands. In 1985, three associated undersea features were designated when Queen Elizabeth’s name was added to a rise, a slope and a shelf, respectively. As Anderson points out (and Vincent Massey would recognize), there’s something of a statement in the scale of the features associated with the Queen.

Queen Elizabeth II was on hand in August 1978 to open the provincial park that was renamed in her honour at Lac Cardinal in northern Alberta. Now noted as a destination for birdwatchers, Queen Elizabeth Provincial Park greeted its namesake with a different kind of air show. “The Queen was attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes,” an Edmonton newspaper reported, “and had to repeatedly bat the bloodthirsty insects away from her face.”

In 2002, on the occasion of her 50th year on the throne, the Queen made a Golden Jubilee tour of Canada. In Ontario, she was recognized with the christening of another provincial preserve, this one near Minden. Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park is home to bears, moose and rare northern ribbon snakes; the Queen has yet to visit them. That royal tour generated a flurry of celebratory nomenclature, including the naming of Golden Jubilee parks in the Ontario municipalities of Hamilton and Hali-burton, and a rose garden in Moose Jaw, Sask. Travelling north — her first visit to Nunavut since its creation in 1999 — the Queen stopped in Iqaluit, where she inspected a city byway that had been dedicated to her: the road formerly known as Ring Road was now Queen Elizabeth II Way.

DON’T BE FOOLED: Many a Canadian monarchical name predates the incumbent. The reigns of other queens, some of them also named Elizabeth, have been honoured in the local geography going back to the summer of 1576, when Martin Frobisher sailed a flotilla in search of a Northwest Passage in what’s now the Davis Strait. He thought the shore he was looking at was Labrador when, in fact, it was the southern edge of Baffin Island: no matter, he named it Queen Elizabeth Foreland. Elizabeth I is also commemorated in British Columbia’s Interior, with a peak (Mount Queen Bess) and in ice (Queen Bess Glacier).

Toronto’s central Queen Street was named Lot Street before 1837, when it was renamed to honour Queen Victoria. While Queen Elizabeth II has now reigned six years longer than her great-great-grandmother, it’s worth noting that Victoria still reigns supreme when it comes to the Canadian map: no individual is honoured in name more than her.

Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Park is named for the Queen Mother and was dedicated by her on her 1939 state visit to Canada with King George VI. The same goes for Ontario’s Queen Elizabeth Way, which she opened on that same visit. Oddly, Ontario’s 400-series highways, of which the QEW is one, are still officially designated as the King’s Highway.

While no new grand naming gestures are in the cards for this year’s Jubilee, a notable gardening effort is underway, coordinated by Queen Elizabeth’s provincial and territorial vice-regal representatives. The Plati­num Jubilee Gardens project involves all 13 provinces and territories, each developing a garden of their own, designed for local climates and conditions, to be unveiled over the course of the summer. As part of the effort, all 13 vice-regal offices have received tobacco seeds from the Chapel Royal at the University of Toronto’s Massey College. In 2017, the Chapel Royal was officially designated Gi-Chi-Twaa Gimaa Kwe Mississauga Anishinaabek Aname Amik, or the Queen’s Anishinaabek Sacred Place. The inclusion of this tobacco in each Jubilee garden represents the enduring relationship between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples.

On the grounds of Government House in Regina, the Jubilee Garden is a circle, with benches and signage with a particular focus on Indigenous reconciliation, according to Heather Salloum, executive director and private secretary in the office of Saskatchewan’s Lieutenant-Governor Russ Mirasty. A member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band and Saskatchewan’s first Indigenous lieutenant-governor, Mirasty was the first of Queen Elizabeth’s vice-regal representatives to deliver her greetings in Woodland Cree at his formal installation ceremony in 2019. Enclosed by a hedge of pasture sage, Saskatchewan’s Jubilee Garden plantings in recognition of Her Majesty’s 70-year reign include Labrador tea, prairie smoke, common yarrow, western silvery aster and, of course, Queen Elizabeth roses.

Beyond the speeches and commemorations of the Platinum Jubilee, the Crown in this country has a deeper role to play. But what exactly is “the Crown” in Canada? In a nutshell, it’s the democratic institution of constitutional monarchy. Government is carried out in the name of the reigning monarch by their “advisers” — the ministers of the Crown led by the prime minister or premier and responsible to the elected representatives of the people in Parliament or a legislature. 

Monarchy has been at the centre of governments in Canada for more than 500 years. When John Cabot landed in Newfoundland in 1497 and Jacques Cartier in Gaspé in 1534, they flew the banners of their kings. French and British monarchs presided over colonial settlements until the French regime was displaced by the British in 1763.

During the negotiations for Confederation in the 1860s, one point was uncontested: the new dominion would be a constitutional monarchy with Queen Victoria as sovereign. A governor general would represent the Crown for the country as a whole, and a lieutenant governor would do the same in each province. They would act as mini constitutional monarchs in their jurisdictions.

THE CROWN AND GOVERNMENT

The Crown is more than just a symbol; it is a political institution at the heart of Canada’s democratic system of government. Canada is a constitutional monarchy with responsible government and a parliamentary structure.

In concrete terms, this means the Queen’s representatives formally appoint prime ministers and premiers. They must give royal assent to bills for them to become law. Parliamentarians, police and military personnel, and new citizens swear allegiance to the Queen of Canada. Justice is administered by the courts in the name of the Queen.

But though governments derive their powers from the monarch, they can exercise them only with the support of a majority of elected representatives of the people. If they lose the confidence of the House or legislature, they must submit their resignation to the Queen’s representative. The governor general and the lieutenant governors also retain some “reserve powers”: appointing the first minister, proroguing and dissolving Parliament or the legislature, and ultimately dismissing a first minister and government if they overstep the bounds of constitutional legitimacy.

THE CROWN AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

From early contact, the Crown was the institution through which Europeans established formal relationships with Indigenous Peoples. King George III’s Royal Proclamation of 1763 and its ratification by the Nations of the Great Lakes Region through the 1764 Treaty of Niagara affirmed Indigenous sovereignty in their lands.

The treaties that have been signed incorporated promises of peace, friendship and co-operation. The historic relationship between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples, the treaties and the rights they encompass continues to be guaranteed by the “honour of the Crown.” This is why they are made with the Crown and not the government of the day.

THE MONARCHY TODAY

The Constitution Act, 1982 entrenched the monarchy in Canada and kept Queen Elizabeth II as Canada’s head of state. Amendments to the Constitution that relate to the offices of the Queen, the governor general and the lieutenant governor of a province require the unanimous consent of both houses of Parliament and all 10 provincial legislative assemblies.

As Queen Elizabeth II marks her Platinum Jubilee, constitutional monarchy remains a key feature of Canada’s political and constitutional order, the culmination of five centuries of historical evolution, distinguishing us from our southern neighbours, symbolizing the treaty relationships and serving as a unique element of national identity.

Michael Jackson is the president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada.

In which young royal watcher Margaret Atwood goes to extreme lengths for the best view of the Queen’s motorcade — and immortalizes that day 71 years later.