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Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 is duly noted at the Canada Atlantic Railway office at the corner of Spark and Elgin Streets in Ottawa.
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At the same time in London, capital of the Empire, the Queen Empress herself is carried through the streets in her new phaeton — the same small carriage Queen Elizabeth II uses today during the Trooping of the Colour.
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When Edward, the Prince of Wales, made his first trip to Canada in 1919, he was made an honorary chief of the Stony Creek Indians (now Saik’uz First Nation) in Alberta. He clearly liked the ceremonial outfit and managed to keep his cigar going in his right hand, while showing off the family’s signet ring on his left.
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Prince Edward kept the headdress he received from the Stony Creek Indians and wore it again in Banff on the same 1919 trip. He was a huge hit with Canadians in all areas of the country, but his particular identification with First Nations communities and western Canada was widely noticed.
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By 1923, Prince Edward had purchased the E. P. (Edward Prince) Ranch in Alberta and was revelling in the rancher’s life. He sent this picture of himself, sitting on top of one of his bulls, to his father, King George V.
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The Duke and Duchess of York on their wedding day, April 26, 1923. The second son of King George V was “doomed” to become king when in 1936 the abdication crisis unfolded.
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Two years after King George VI and Queen Elizabeth ascended to the throne, they took an historic trip to Canada — the first by a reigning sovereign. Here, in May 1939, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, in full court dress, greets them upon their arrival by ship in Quebec City.
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The King and Queen of Canada arrive at the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa on their 1939 tour. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, still in full court dress, welcomes the monarch and his wife.
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King George VI and Queen Elizabeth take the royal salute before the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa (1939).
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King George VI gives the Royal Assent to Canadian parliamentary bills from the throne chair in the Senate Chamber (1939).
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The huge success of the royal tour meant that the Liberal Prime Minister W. L. M. King was never far away from photo opportunities. Here he is, finally out of his full court dress, posing with the royal couple at the Banff Springs Hotel in late May 1939. “Canada made us,” the Queen would later say about their cross-country trip.
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King George VI’s eldest daughter and heir to the throne, Princess Elizabeth, marries her dream prince, Philip Mountbatten of Greece, on November 20, 1947.
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Princess Elizabeth attends the Calgary Stampede on her first royal tour of Canada in 1951. J. B. Cross, president of the Calgary Stampede, helps Princess Elizabeth down to the Navajo rug in her “all-Canadian” mink coat, while Prince Philip waits in the coach.
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Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip proceeded westward from Calgary on their 1951 tour. At Sicamous, British Columbia, school children gather at a whistle stop to greet Princess Elizabeth before she continues on to Vancouver.
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Governor General Viscount Alexander of Tunis threw a square dance party at Rideau Hall to celebrate the end of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s first tour of Canada in 1951. Exactly sixty years later, in 2011, her grandson and a future king of Canada — William, Duke of Cambridge, and his duchess, Catherine — would be in the same house at the beginning of their first tour.
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Crowned and enthroned on her Coronation Day, June 2, 1953, and surrounded by all the ancient pomp and pageantry her ancient “other realm” can muster, the new Queen of Canada officially begins her new reign.
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The first Canadian-born governor general, Vincent Massey, set a standard for governors general travelling north. Here he is in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island, in March 1956. He was an enthusiastic supporter of First Nations rights and recognition.
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At La Citadelle de Québec in 1964, the Queen is escorted by the first French-Canadian governor general, Georges Vanier, founding colonel of the Royal 22nd Regiment of Canada, the famous Van Doos.
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Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip wave goodbye at the end of their 1967 centennial year visit to Canada.
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Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s famous pirouette behind the Queen’s back was a gesture of rebellion after he had been excluded from a “heads of state” dinner in May 1977. As he was merely the head of government and the Queen was the official head of state, he was miffed at being excluded and actually practiced the pirouette as a non-verbal act of rebellion.
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During her Silver Jubilee tour of Canada in 1977, the Queen is greeted by a salute of oars at Ottawa’s Dow Lake, where a special Jubilee Regatta is being staged.
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The inevitable balcony shot at Buckingham Palace of the Prince of Wales and Princess Diana after their wedding on July 29, 1981.
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Head of government and head of state are happily enough rejoined in this iconic picture of Queen Elizabeth II, signing the Constitutional Proclamation on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 17, 1982, as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau looks on. Canada, at last, becomes a sovereign nation — thanks to the same sovereign as before!
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In the happier early years of marriage, the Prince and Princess of Wales appear in Klondike style at Fort Edmonton, Alberta, in 1983.
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Less than eight years later in, during a royal tour in Toronto in 1991, the stress and emotional weight of a failing marriage was all too clear to see.
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Prince Charles has never had an easy ride as the seemingly perpetual heir to the throne. Even though the criticisms and invasions of privacy have seemed beyond reasonable endurance, he carries on. Here, on a visit to Gatineau, Quebec’s Museum of Canadian Civilization in 2001, he appears to be competing for patience with a totem pole.
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In Toronto on the 2001 tour, the Prince of Wales is hosted by Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor Hilary Weston.
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In Vancouver, British Columbia, during the 2002 Golden Jubilee tour, the Queen made a bit of personal history by dropping the puck at a pre-season NHL game in October, while hockey legend Wayne Gretzky looks on.
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In October 2002, Prince Philip was made an honorary Senior Fellow of Massey College in the University of Toronto. He had laid the cornerstone of the college forty years earlier to honour his friend Vincent Massey, the college’s founder. Here, the fourth Master of the College, John Fraser, listens as the Queen’s consort remembers the earlier occasion.
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Queen Elizabeth II is surrounded by flowers and flags during her Golden Jubilee tour in October 2002, in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
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Two formidable ladies — Queen Elizabeth II and Governor General Adrienne Clarkson — arrive for a tree-planting ceremony during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee tour in 2002.
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Prince Charles and Governor General Michaëlle Jean wave to the crowd during welcoming ceremonies in St. John’s, Newfoundland, as the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall begin an eleven-day tour of Canada in 2009.
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Reviewing the troops in Toronto during the 2009 tour, the Prince of Wales is clearly more relaxed with his second wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
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The official wedding photo of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, came at the conclusion of one of the most successful royal liaisons in decades. The couple had a long period to get used to each other and the rigours of the official lives that lie ahead for them.
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Over seventy years after his great grandparents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, arrived in Canada for the all-important first tour of Canada, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrive in 2011 to a dramatically different country — but then they were a dramatically different couple. As Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother once observed, “Canada made us.” It made her great grandson and his bride too, especially with her maple leaf fascinator.
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The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, still dubbed “William and Kate” by the media, go in for some competitive dragon boating in Dalvay Lake, Prince Edward Island, during the 2011 tour. William embraces Kate after his team won the friendly challenge.
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On July 8, 2011, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge press the button to launch the Calgary Stampede. Their informality and ease echoed the same traits observers saw when Edward, Prince of Wales, took Alberta by storm in 1919, nearly a century earlier.
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The royal couple leave Calgary for Los Angeles at the end of a wildly successful tour of Canada. Their wedding and subsequent tours have solidified the royal couple’s starring role in the new era of the monarchy — in Canada as well as the other countries where they will be constitutional monarchs some day.
Endnotes
1 Removed, that is, until they were restored to the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force forty-three years later, in 2011, by the Tory administration of Stephen Harper — an event which alternately delighted or perplexed Canadians.
2 Also restored, in October 2011, by order of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It is very difficult to write an up-to-date book on the Canadian Crown when almost every other day the government announces yet another change to the storyline!
3 Now, ironically, thanks to inflation, the Queen’s face on the $20 bill is more familiar than Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s on the $5 bill or Sir John A. Macdonald’s on the $10 bill, who were clearly intended to have pride of position over the Sovereign when the changed portraits were first ordered up in 1969. Sic transit gloria economica!
4 This was under the editorship of William Thorsell in the 1990s. His successor, John Stackhouse, has reversed this editorial decision, and the Globe and Mail is once again, on the subject of the monarchy, a supporter of the constitutional status quo.
5 And then there’s Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s typically pungent defence of the monarchy through his interpretation of French-Canadian history: “When you think about it,” he said in 1994, “the American Revolution was promoted by the French. And they, Quebec, refused to join. It was nothing to do with language but a lot to do with religion. And they felt more secure in the main, Catholics in Canada. More security for the religion, what the monarchy was giving them in those days, compared to the Americans. So they stayed.”
6 That’s the Latin motto of Canada on all our official coats of arms. It’s from Psalm 72 (verse 8) of the Jewish scriptures: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” It was approved and proclaimed by King George V in November 1921.
7 The organizers took a vote at the beginning of each debate: those for and against the motion, and those who were reserving their opinion until they heard the arguments. I held the majority of those who voted pro-monarchy at the beginning, but Bliss won the majority of those who hadn’t initially decided.
8 I am talking about a future child of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, in case my genealogical enthusiasm is confusing you.
9 “Canada is a constitutional monarchy. Since 1534, when the king of France claimed possession of what is now Canada, the history of our country has been marked by the reigns of an uninterrupted succession of monarchs, both French and British, who have had a significant influence on our country’s development.”
10 The only time this didn’t work was for King Edward VIII, but then he made the catastrophic mistake of marrying his scarecrow, Wallis Simpson.
11 To truly appreciate the difference between the Canadian and British Crowns, a comparison of parliamentary state openings is useful. When the Queen has opened a session of the Canadian Parliament, she is accompanied by no more than four officials and often is dressed in normal civvies. In the “Mother of Parliaments” in London, she comes crowned and robed, four pageboys carry her train, and her attendants include the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chamberlain, the Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office (who has to keep his or her eye on the Imperial State Crown), the Earl Marshal of England (the Duke of Norfolk), the Assistant Comptroller of the Chamberlain’s Office (who carries the “Cap of Maintenance” — look it up for yourself, as this footnote is already too long by half), a minimum of four Gentlemen Ushers, the Sovereign’s “Serjeants-at-Arms” with their maces, and two lines of dismounted troopers of the Household Calvary.
12 In striking contrast, CTV hired Richard Berthelsen, who is a former private secretary to the lieutenant governor of Ontario and has also worked at Rideau Hall. Berthelsen knew his stuff backwards, spoke sensibly and eloquently about all aspects of the royal visit, and made sure viewers understood the relevant history, protocol, and significance of the unfolding events. He was a star.
13 Self, like a number of upper-middle-class Britons of a certain hue (Oxford educated, he is the son of a London School of Economics professor and married, the first time, the granddaughter of Lord Hylton and the great-granddaughter of H. H. Asquith, the British prime minister), decries the monarchy because of its reinforcement of class values: “Post-Diana,” he wrote in the April 2011 issue of the British magazine Prospect, “the Windsors are the foremost example of people who are feted in the media for accidental reasons, and not by virtue of any talent, let alone determination to succeed. People unconsciously understand this: for them, marrying into the Windsors is the genealogical equivalent of winning the lottery: the odds are virtually nonexistent, but wouldn’t it be amazing. This abandonment to Goddess Fortuna masks the extent to which the monarchy infantilises the public and squats like a fat toad atop the still-existent hierarchy of class in British society.”
14 Or when Canadians visit Buckingham Palace, or indeed on any sort of Canadian occasion abroad (the visit to Canada’s Vimy Memorial in France, for example) or the Canadian High Commission in London.
15 Actually, there is an interesting and much older aboriginal connection, in this case to Queen Anne. In 1710, a group of Mohawk chiefs from upper New York travelled to England and were presented to Anne and talked of their conversion to Christianity. In response, the Sovereign arranged for the construction of a chapel at Fort Hunter in the colony of New York’s Mohawk Valley and gave them a silver communion service. Sixty-five years later, at the start of the American Revolution, the Mohawks buried their silver and sided with the British in the ensuing battles. Their reward was the confiscation of their ancestral lands by the new American government, and at the invitation of the governor of Upper Canada after an intervention by the Indian leader Joseph Brant and other Six Nations representatives, the Mohawks moved to the shores of Lake Ontario just west of what is now Deseronto. They reclaimed their silver and built themselves the first of several churches, each of which featured an altarpiece containing the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, along with the Royal Arms and a bell, all donated by King George III. Today, Christ Church in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory is recognized as a National Historic Site, but long before that designation, it had been made a Chapel Royal by the Sovereign.
16 Also, years later, I read Roald Dahl’s wonderful memoir of his childhood, Boy, and discovered that he went to a private school in England where the headmaster, the self-same Dr. Fisher before he became such a high and mighty prelate of the church, got his jollies by savagely caning little boys. That tweaked my old concern about the Queen's being so exposed to his gaze, until I realized baser things turned him on and I needn’t have worried so much.
17 If you like memory games, here are the names of the other kings of Canada who ruled from France until 1763, when the kingship of Canada passed by treaty from France to Britain after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham: François I, Henri III, Henri IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV. Here’s a memory-jogging clue: François × 1, Henri × 2, and Louis × 3. Go ahead: impress your friends. Ask them if they can name the first six monarchs who ruled over Canada.
18 The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II by Ben Pimlott, HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.
19 To commemorate the centenary of the Charlottetown Conference of 1864, which began the formal negotiations towards Confederation in 1867.
20 I would include Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born governor general and his successor, General Georges Vanier. In fact, Vanier and Madam Clarkson are really the only two outstanding GGs; I include Mr. Massey out of loyalty to the founder of my college.
21 “Something as curious as the monarchy won’t survive unless you take account of people’s attitudes. After all, if people don’t want it, they won’t have it.”
22 C.H. stands for “Companion of Honour” — one of the highest honours the Queen can personally bestow on one of her subjects. It is also an honour which Canadians can accept. One of the most recent in Canada is former prime minister Jean Chrétien, as staunch a monarchist as any royalist would want — when it suits his purposes. Another is Professor Anthony Pawson, the extraordinary University of Toronto researcher into the genetic formulations of cancer. Both Mr. Massey’s C.H. medal and Professor Pawson’s are proudly lodged at Massey College.
23 Dr. Sowby had been my confirmation instructor two years earlier, but the experience had not brought us very close. On one occasion, the confirmation class filed out of his office and I saw that two boys were waiting to see him. I learned later that, for his convenience, he had booked them both in for a caning after our class as punishment for some sort of misdemeanour. This episode later led to my first experience of censorship. I wrote what I thought was a brilliant satire for the College Times of the confusion in Dr. Sowby’s confirmation class about a strict understanding of the Bible’s admonition to “turn the other cheek.” The student editor refused to even discuss why it was rejected. Editors! What can you do about them?
24 My moral purity during this difficult personal period couldn’t have been higher, however, because I got the grand mark of seven out of one hundred in physics. Clearly I had bought no exams. When my perplexed father, who had never seen a single-digit mark on a report card before, asked how on earth it came about, I was equally perplexed: “I don’t know, Dad. I didn’t even write the exam.” But then he was dealing with my poor mentally disordered mother and I had found it safer simply to block out the real world, including anything as peripheral as exams and UCC.
25 In his magisterial two-volume biography of Vincent Massey, Claude Bissell reports on two Englishmen of “impeccable credentials” discussing the 1935 appointment of the anglophile Massey as Canada’s new High Commissioner. “They agree he has excellent qualities,” writes Bissell, “then one adds plaintively, ‘But damn it all, the fellow always makes one feel like a bloody savage.’”
26 Also, I say “saint-like” for more than metaphoric embellishment. In fact, he and his wife, Pauline Vanier, are actually on the road to sainthood, having been nominated together for beatification in 1992, shortly after Madame Vanier’s death the same year.
27 This categorization is a personal theory, and debatable, but I would list the Canadian-born or naturalized governors general — from best to least in terms of effectiveness — in each category as follows: “Right Royal” — Georges Vanier, Roland Michener, Vincent Massey, Jules Léger, Ray Hnatyshyn; “Crown Legatee” — Adrienne Clarkson, Roméo LeBlanc, Jeanne Sauvé, Edward Schreyer, Michaëlle Jean. It is too early to definitely position the current occupant, David Johnston.
28 Wiwa, the son of the executed Nigerian patriot Ken Saro-Wiwa, worked out of Massey College when he wrote the tribute to Madam Clarkson in his Globe and Mail column. I remember him bringing it to me first and asking if I thought it was “over the top.” I said it wasn’t, and I also noted that only an outsider from Africa would be allowed to make such a statement, as a Canadian would be roasted alive. Wiwa wrote that the fact that “Adrienne Clarkson, once a refugee, represents the Queen here in Canada is, for me, the singular most important reason for believing the monarchy is relevant to Canada’s emerging identity. Her role may only be ceremonial and symbolic, but as the enduring quality of the Royal Family attests, you can never underestimate the power of myth.“
29 The King-Byng Affair, according to the usefully accurate gospel of Wikipedia, was “a Canadian constitutional crisis . . . when the Governor General of Canada, the Lord Byng of Vimy, refused a request by his prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, to dissolve parliament and call a general election. The crisis came to redefine the role of governor general, not only in Canada but throughout the Dominions, becoming a major impetus in negotiations at Imperial Conferences held in the late 1920s that led to the adoption of the Statute of Westminster in 1931. According to British Empire constitutional convention, the governor general once represented both the sovereign in his British council and his Canadian council, but the convention had evolved with Byng’s predecessors, the Canadian government, and the Canadian people, into a tradition of non-interference in Canadian political affairs on the part of the British government. After 1931, the governor general remained an important figure in Canadian governance as a constitutional watchdog, but it is one that has shed its previous imperial duties.”
30 On that first trip to Finland following the Clarkson viceregal visit, it took me a while before I told Herself that one high official had said, admiringly, “it was the greatest state visit to Finland since the Czar came.” I certainly never told her NDP and Liberal Party critics either, and now both parties have other fish to fry and Adrienne Clarkson is far away from the griddle.
31 “I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the Prime Minister for this brilliant appointment,” wrote Ms. Wente. “Hilary Weston will be a shining example to the ordinary women of this province. And I would like to thank Mrs. Weston, in advance, for the sacrifices she is about to make in the name of duty. She will, for example, have to step aside from her job as deputy chairwoman of Holt Renfrew. I just hope she can get those third-floor dressing rooms remodelled before she goes. The ones at the Bloor and Yonge store. They really are quite tacky.” Allan Fotheringham, on the other hand, couldn’t get over the thought of how uncomfortable it would be for Hilary Weston to be handing out certificates of merit to miners in Sudbury and sitting down to tea with working wives in Hamilton. Both Ms. Wente and Mr. Fotheringham wrote, one presumes, from their extensive experience of living amongst the ordinary folk of Ontario. Ms. Wente has been spied, at least once, accepting help from a waitress in handling a coffee machine at her place of employment, and I know for a fact that Mr. Fotheringham is never loath to get opinions from taxi drivers.
32 There were “governors” of Newfoundland — Britain’s oldest colony and for years a self-governing dominion, like Canada — right up to 1949. The title is still deployed by a certain sort of patriotic Newfoundlander, perhaps to remind mainlanders that they have a different history than Canada’s prior to Confederation.
33 Steinhauer in Alberta, 1974; Dumont in Manitoba, 1993; Bartleman in Ontario, 2002; Point in British Columbia, 2007; and Nicholas in New Brunswick, 2009.
34 Like all young married couples, Philip and Elizabeth had adjustments to make, only their adjustments had to be made under the full glare of media intrusiveness. A few years after his marriage in 1947 and the Coronation in 1953, the sorrow over his lost career in the Royal Navy and the almost total lack of privacy perhaps overwhelmed him. In any event, with the Queen’s fervent approval, he was allowed to go on an extended world cruise aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia to do some travelling in peace that he could never do otherwise, there to figure out how to handle the rest of his life, a life he had pledged to his wife and Sovereign. The speculation about a marriage breakup — completely manufactured — continued until they were happily back together again, several months later. Then it was time to go after Princess Margaret again.
35 The ruthlessness of the ghouls who worked at the News of the World should not be underestimated. A senior psychiatrist at a leading Canadian hospital, who was born and trained in London before emigrating with his family to Canada, recently told me a typical story. During his residency in the late 1980s under an eminent psychiatrist, a senior reporter from the News of the World contacted him discreetly and told him that they had solid information that Princess Diana was seeing a psychiatrist and they believed it was his supervisor. “I wouldn’t know,” said my informant, “as my supervisor doesn’t see his private patients at the hospital.” Yes, pressed the reporter, but we want you to look at his schedule. “Why would I do that?” he asked indignantly. “Because you would not like to see what we would publish about what you have been up to,” came the startling answer. “But I have done nothing wrong,” he said, again indignantly. “Perhaps. But we suspect that you cannot afford to disprove what we will write about you if you don’t help us.” My informant, an anti-monarchist, felt sufficiently threatened to check that schedule, found nothing, and managed to worm his way out of trouble. I didn’t question his meek acquiescence because we now know if he had informed the police about this blatant act of extortion, the police — already corrupted by the Murdoch forces — might have duly reported him to the News of the World editors.
36 His father, Prince Philip, and his uncle, Lord Mountbatten.
37 Just go to your friendly Google gossip service and punch in “Prince Charles + Camilla + cell phone conversation.”
38 Famously, we now know, Edward VII’s “longest-serving” and last mistress, Alice Keppel, was also the great-grandmother of the Duchess of Cornwall. In Gyles Brandreth’s 2006 study of Charles and Camilla (Portrait of a Love Affair, Arrow Books), King Edward is depicted enjoying the ordinary domesticity of life in Mrs. Keppel’s household, “kindly allowing her children, who called him ‘kingy,’ to race slices of buttered toast down his trouser leg.” Queen Alexandra, thanks to the customs of the day, was not allowed the privilege of a lover, and the crumbs from her buttered toast were merely “warm relationships” with courtiers and her dogs. In the little dog cemetery on the grounds of Marlborough House near Buckingham Palace (now the headquarters for the Commonwealth Secretariat, but for some years prior the retirement home for Alexandra in her widowhood), there is a wee stone memorial for “Mr. Jiggs, faithful friend to Queen Alexandra for seventeen years” — sadly more faithful than her husband, the King-Emperor.
39 KING HENRY, prior to the Battle of Agincourt:
Upon the king! Let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children, and our sins, lay on the king!
We must bear all. O hard condition!
Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath
Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel
But his own wringing! What infinite heart’s-ease
Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!
And what have kings that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
40 A good example is the vicious attacks on Charles for his support of “integrated” medicine. He has never said anything other than to give alternative methods a look before dismissing them, and that drives some Western medical practitioners wild with anger, although if any profession should know that it is as much an art as a science it should be the medical profession. But, just as Prince Charles’s “unacceptable and eccentric views” on the ecosystem of the planet are now everyone’s religion, so in the new age of unaffordable medicine are alternative solutions coming into their own. In the July issue of The Atlantic, for example, the major feature touted on the cover is “The Triumph of New-Age Medicine,” and the come-on blurb atop the actual article states: “Medicine has long decried acupuncture, homeopathy, and the like as dangerous nonsense that preys on the gullible. Again and again, carefully controlled studies have shown alternative medicine to work no better than a placebo. But now many doctors admit that alternative medicine often seems to do a better job of making patients well, and at a much lower cost, than mainstream care — and they are trying to learn from it.”
41 Here comes an offbeat “full disclosure” moment, because this perfectly coincides with my own metaphysical views. I do not like to be cut off from any possibilities. At Massey College, where I work and reside, there is a College Prayer — penned initially by Robertson Davies for an all-male college and somewhat rejigged by me to accommodate the other half of humanity at a coeducational college. It is on the choir wall of St. Catherine’s Chapel under the Latin quote from Erasmus, via Horace, that was the personal credo of Carl Jung, who had it carved over the portal of his front door: VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT (Called or not called, God is present), and here is the prayer: “Beloved God, you have in your wisdom placed in the minds of men and women a pure principle which in different places and ages has had different names, but which we know proceeds from you. It is deep, and inward, confined to no religion, nor excluded from anywhere the heart stands in perfect sincerity. Wherever this takes root and grows, a community is nourished. Grant, our God and Mentor, that all who are accepted in fellowship at this College in search of wisdom in this world, may also find your wisdom, and that the children of this House may be united through you in their courage, inquiry and mutual concern. amen.”
42 Charles expanded on his theme in the ITV interview, but the continuation never made the final cut. According to his biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby, he went on to say: “I feel that certainly the great Middle Eastern religions — Judaism, Islam, Christianity — all stemming from the same geographical area — all have a great deal in common. And I think Christianity had a great deal more in common a long time ago than it does now — sadly in my opinion . . . A lot of that is due to the great schism between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Church before the Reformation produced Protestantism. I also think there are aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism, again further east, which are attached by very profound threads to Islam, Christianity and Judaism. And when you begin to look at what these religions are saying, you find that so much of the wisdom that is represented within these religions coincides . . .”
43 Most of the audience at the Board of Deputies’ 250th anniversary dinner celebration would have known that this was a reference to the long period when Jews were expelled from Britain and barred from entry.
44 Prince Charles started the Prince’s Trust in 1976, and even his detractors (including Max Hastings) acknowledge its originality and genius in sparking new opportunities for disadvantaged youth. Other than the proof it offers of Charles’s vision and steadfastness, the specifics of the Prince’s Trust are not particularly pertinent to this tale, but do yourself a favour and check it out. The official website is www.princes-trust.org.uk, and the Wikipedia entry provides a good overview and history.
45 When his elder son, Prince William, dazzled Canadians with the sincerity with which he greeted strangers and the consideration he gave to everyone who crossed his path, I wonder if anyone realized it was more than his mother’s DNA at work. It takes two people to make a human being, and William has as much of Charles coursing through his veins and cerebellum as he does of Diana. No one who has met Prince Charles is in any doubt about the kindness of heart of the father or the son.
46 An anti-monarchist could rest his or her case right here, but, one suspects, Professor Creighton wasn’t much of a jokester.
47 As I did during centennial year, 1967, when I was a student journalist for the Evening Telegram in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and covered the reception for the visiting Queen Mother aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia. I had just broken up with the daughter of a provincial cabinet minister. As luck would have it, at the reception we were flung together for the first time since the acrimonious split a few days previously. We were snarling at each other when an equerry approached and said: “Oh, do come with me. Her Majesty would love to speak to some young people.” I knew it would be a disaster, and as I walked towards the beaming Matriarch of Matriarchs I was pretty sure I would talk too much and also that I would get into an argument with my ex. Both things happened and, memorably, after a short, snarling exchange, the Queen Mother shushed us up with: “Children, children. This will pass. Now tell me what you are studying at university.”
48 The “R.I.” is royalty Latin for Rex et Imperator, “King and Emperor” (of India).
49 “I want Canada to look upon me as Canadian,” Edward said on his 1919 tour in Western Canada. “If I’m not actually Canadian born, I’m a Canadian in mind and spirit.” It was on this hugely successful trip that he set in motion the purchase of the EP (Edwardus Princeps was his Latin moniker) Ranch, 1,400 acres in the foothills of the Rockies, purchased at $25 an acre. In their 2011 book on royal tours in Canada, authors Arthur Bousfield and Garry Toffoli report that Edward threw himself into the work of the 1923 harvest. Wearing shabby clothes, he stooked oats, chopped sunflowers, pitched hay, and filled the silo. “I’ve even helped muck out the cowhouse,” he told King George V. “I chop and saw the wood and I can assure you it is very hard work indeed!” At breakfast, Edward ate flapjacks and brook trout with his field hands; for lunch, corn on the cob (without utensils); and at dinner, spuds, carrots, and beets fresh from the ground. Edward kept the ranch till 1962, but one gathers his sophisticated wife, for whom he gave up “everything,” was not so enamoured of mucking out the cowhouse.
50 In fact, she is an avid reader of all sorts of books (forgetting the volumes of state papers she ploughs through every week) and has been known to complain — to Mordecai Richler — about the amount of time her grandchildren spend in front of “the box” instead of taking in a good book.
51 Victoria began her reign on June 20, 1837, and died on January 22, 1901, ruling for sixty-three years and 216 days. Queen Elizabeth II has reigned since February 6, 1952. At eighty-five years old in 2011, she is already the oldest reigning monarch in the history of our Crown. If, the Lord willing, she makes it to September 10, 2015, she will pass the length of Queen Victoria’s epic reign, and she will be eighty-nine years old. Third on this particular list is Canada’s first monarch from Great Britain, George III, who reigned from October 25, 1760, to January 29, 1820, for a total of fifty-nine years and ninety-two days, but there was a regency presided over by his son, the Prince of Wales (and future George IV) for much of the latter part of the reign, when the King was “indisposed.”
52 Her Canadian prime ministers, thus far, have been: Louis St. Laurent, John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Joe Clark, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, and Stephen Harper — eleven and still counting.
53 “The personality conveyed by the utterances which are put into her mouth,” Lord Altrincham wrote, “is that of a priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey team, a prefect and a recent candidate for confirmation . . . [Her style of speaking is] a pain in the neck . . . [Yet when she is older] the Queen’s reputation will depend, far more than it does now, upon her personality . . . She will have to say things which people can remember and do things on her own initiative which will make people sit up and take notice.”
54 A quite censorious young graduate student at Massey College once told me very solemnly that the Queen and her family were “dysfunctional.” I just looked at her with wild surmise and that kindly smile I try to put on when faced with the unconscious arrogance of youth: “And yours isn’t?” I asked as gently as I could. She looked at me completely nonplussed. I pushed on. “I mean, I come from a classically dysfunctional family myself, and I always assumed everyone else did too, at least from time to time. But apparently you don’t. I really want to meet your mum and dad when they come here next and congratulate them.” She didn’t laugh, alas.
55 Burmese served the Queen from 1969 to 1986. She was born at the RCMP Remount Ranch at Fort Walsh, Saskatchewan, and trained at the headquarters in Ottawa. When Burmese was retired from state duties in 1986, she was put out to pasture in Windsor Great Park and died in 1990, undoubtedly the Queen’s favourite horse. The Queen chose not to replace her but instead troops the colours each year in Queen Victoria’s venerable phaeton (a small carriage shown on page 1 of the first insert). In 2005 in Regina, Saskatchewan, the Queen unveiled a statue of herself on Burmese outside the provincial legislature building.
56 In Ben Pimlott’s 1996 biography of Elizabeth, The Queen, the famous incident is reported in almost comic-opera fashion: “Early in the morning of July 9th [1982], the Queen was disturbed in her bedroom by a man who had apparently climbed into the gardens, shinned up a drainpipe, and wandered through corridors unchallenged. The intruder, Michael Fagan, drew the curtains, waking the Queen up, and began talking about his family. It took two calls by the Queen to the police switchboard before a chambermaid and a footman arrived and escorted him out. Afterwards, she told a courtier that, confronted by Fagan sitting on her bed with a bleeding hand, holding a broken ashtray, ‘I got out of bed, put on my dressing gown and slippers, drew myself up to my full regal height, pointed to the door, and said “Get out!” and he didn’t.’ She told a friend, ‘He just talked the usual sort of bilge that people talk to me on walkabout, I can handle that.’ But she was not entirely nonchalant about the incident. ‘I have never heard the Queen so angry,’ said her footman, who was with her when she spoke to police on the telephone from her study, after Fagan had been taken away.”
57 I cherish two undoubtedly apocryphal tales, which I have heard so often I think of them as a royal subspecies of the urban legend phenomenon. The first has the Queen Mother opening a retirement home in Bournemouth (or Bristol or Edinburgh or Norwich), and when she finds herself with a dear old thing who clearly hasn’t a clue who the Queen Mum is, she asks her gently: “My dear, do you know who I am?” The response? “No, my dear, I don’t, but if you ask at the desk they’ll tell you.” The second has the Duke of Edinburgh in a church hall in Sudbury (or North Bay or Clarenville or Saanich) for lunch, and the waitress, picking up the empty main course plates, says: “Keep the fork, Duke. There’s pie.”
58 Vincent Massey, Georges Vanier, Roland Michener, Jules Léger, Edward Schreyer, Jeanne Sauvé, Raymond Hnatyshyn, Roméo LeBlanc, Adrienne Clarkson, Michaëlle Jean, David Johnston. And here’s some more crucial footnote trivia: The names of the first Francophone and Anglophone governors of Canada are Samuel de Champlain, 1627–35 (remembered in Champlain, Quebec, and the disintegrating Champlain Bridge in Montreal) and Sir Jeffrey (later Lord) Amherst, 1760–63 (remembered in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and Amherst Island, Ontario).
59 The controversy over the lack of assistance provided to the beleaguered Russian Royal Family by their British relations continues. Elizabeth’s grandfather, George V, probably advised by his British prime minister, offered minimum assistance (for fear of revolutionary contamination, apparently) and may have thus contributed to their gruesome deaths. In the late 1940s, the highest-ranking survivor of the Czar’s family, his aunt the Grand Duchess Olga, ended up with her two sons in a modest semi-detached home on Toronto’s Delisle Avenue before moving to a farm in Halton County. It was commonly held in the neighbourhood (it was my Fraser grandparents’ street) that King George (VI) had paid for the house. On the other hand, Michael Ignatieff, a grandson of the Czar’s last Minister of Education, Count Pavel Ignatieff, met the Queen in Ottawa in 2010 as the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Life is passing strange.
60 I realized how great the social transition was when I received a formal invitation from Ontario’s “Premier Ernie Eves and [his common-law partner] Mrs. Isabel Bassett” to join them and the Queen and Prince Philip for a 2002 Golden Jubilee reception in Toronto. Princess Margaret died a month before the Golden Jubilee officially began, so she missed the frisson of bemused satisfaction such an official invitation would have caused.
61 GUENEVERE: What else do the simple folk do? To help them escape when they’re blue. ARTHUR: They sit around and wonder what royal folk do. That’s what simple folk do. GUENEVERE: Oh no, really? ARTHUR: I have it on the best authority.
62 As Samuel Johnson once pointed out during the period leading up to the independence of the American colonies: “Why is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty amongst the drivers of Negroes?”
63 When I was posted to the People’s Republic of China by the Globe and Mail in 1977, I came across a dramatic and darkly amusing economic parallel to this phenomenon. It was during 1978, when Communist China was emerging from the devastating Cultural Revolution and Taiwan was adjusting to withdrawal of recognition (as the “official” China) by the United States. Inspecting a former commune in the Canton area of south China, I was fascinated to see how quickly peasant farmers grabbed the new (Communist) government initiative to farm their own small fields (of about one acre), recently returned to them, as well as pocketing their own profits and deciding what the next crop would be, based on their own estimate of what the market wanted. Over in Taiwan, at the same time, the (capitalist) Kuomintang regime was dealing with agricultural woes (declining labour force, random and ill-advised crops) by forcing farmers to pull down their fences on their small allotments (of about one acre), take forced loans from the state to buy mechanical farm equipment, and give a portion of their earnings to the ministry of agriculture. The only thing missing on both sides of the Strait of Formosa was tea with Alice and the Mad Hatter.
64 Ursula Franklin had her own royal moment a few years ago. During the Golden Jubilee tour of Canada by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 2002, the Duke of Edinburgh came to Massey College in Toronto, where he had agreed to become the first honorary Senior Fellow. In a simple but quite moving ceremony, he was “gowned” by the College’s two most illustrious Senior Fellows: Professor Franklin and Nobel Laureate Professor John Polanyi. Polanyi later observed that the event had placed “our small college in the pathway of history,” and Ursula, typically, said Prince Philip had caused a good occasion “to come together and think of something other than ourselves.”
65 There remains constitutional and political controversy surrounding the official interpretation of the Letters Patent, which were adopted by King George VI in 1947. In “Myth and Misunderstanding,” by Dr. Christopher McCreery, one of Canada’s leading experts on the office of the governor general and the honours system itself, issue is taken with two former governors general (Adrienne Clarkson and Michaëlle Jean) who have publicly interpreted this act to mean that the final authority on all matters in Canada was transferred definitively to the governor general. For the most part, according to McCreery, the Letters Patent merely formalized what was already practice, and he quotes former Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, then the minister of external affairs and “the main architect” of the Letters Patent, that the new understanding and revisions were not in any way “revolutionary or startling . . . [but] serve to bring the law abreast of the present constitutional position and practice.” This is some distance from Madame Jean’s proclamation in 2009 that she was head of state, after which she had to suffer the embarrassment of being corrected by the prime minister and reminded that she represented the head of state, who was — surprise, surprise — still the Queen.
66 Other wise writers are listed in the Bibliography, but I am happy particularly to acknowledge here fine scholars and public servants like David Smith, Peter Russell, and Eugene Forsey.
67 This footnote has nothing whatsoever to do with fair-weather friends, because you, dear reader, have followed me all the way to these final pages. Instead, it is a final royal and viceregal trivia quiz, and there is a reward for tolerating so many footnotes. Here’s the challenge: name two geographical locations and one institution in each province named after any member of the royal family. That means THREE names with royal family connections in each province — 30 names in all. PLUS: I want you also to identify ONE geographical location or institution from each province named after a governor general — ten names in all. Send your 40 answers to me, John Fraser, c/o House of Anansi Press, 110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2K4, Canada. The first three accurate answers received and opened by me will get prizes: First Prize is dinner at Massey College with the Senior and Junior Fellows; Second Prize is a bottle of college port; Third Prize is a book of my choosing. All entries will get a somewhat offbeat royal Canadian token of appreciation from the author. This competition, as they say, concludes on June 30, 2012. And, for heaven’s sake: God save the Queen!
Notes
Prologue: Why Secret?
The epigraph comes from a speech by the Queen in Gatineau, Quebec, quoted in the Canadian Press, October 12, 2002.
Michael Bliss’s opinion on young Canadians’ attitude towards the Monarchy was stated during a debate with the author on the future of the Monarchy in Canada, held at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, on January 21, 2011.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s pungent defence of the Monarchy through his interpretation of French-Canadian history (Footnote 5) was stated on April 23, 1994, and quoted from his memoir: Chrétien, Jean. My Years as Prime Minister. Toronto: Knopf, 2008. Page 248.
Chapter One: The Marriage of a Prince
The first epigraph is from “Le Canada, une monarchie constitutionnelle,” an illustrated brochure published by the Senate of Canada.
The second epigraph is from the National Post, June 1, 2011. Page 1.
Walter Bagehot’s quote, “A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such, it rivets mankind,” is from: Bagehot, Walter. The English Constitution, 1867. London: Oxford University Press, 1991. Page 187.
The quote from Jeremy Paxman on royalty and mass media is from: Paxman, Jeremy. On Royalty. London: Viking, 2006. Pages 148 and 182.
The quote from Will Self on the Monarchy infantilising the public is from: Self, Will. “Do We Want a Monarchy?” Prospect, April 2011.
The quotes from William IV on first landing in Canada in Newfoundland and Quebec, and on his meeting with the First Nations, are from: Zeigler, Philip. King William IV. London: Cassell, 1989. Pages 89, 92, and 97.
The article on Étienne Boisvert, the young Quebecois monarchist, is from: Perreaux, Les. “Dieu protège la reine, says young Quebecker.” Globe and Mail, June 2, 2011.
Chapter Two: Tribal Monarchy and Local Royalty
The epigraph is from: Paxman, Jeremy. On Royalty. London: Viking, 2006. Page 177.
Claude Bissell’s comment on Vincent Massey (Footnote 25) is from: Bissell, Claude. The Imperial Canadian: Vincent Massey in Office. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. Page 128.
Ken Wiwa’s comment on Adrienne Clarkson’s appointment to the office of governor general (Footnote 28) is from: Wiwa, Ken. Globe and Mail, February 1, 2003.
Adrienne Clarkson’s “Eulogy for Canada’s Unknown Soldier” is from the official Governor General of Canada website: http://archive.gg.ca.
The description of the King-Byng Affair (Footnote 29) is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King-Byng_Affair.
Margaret Wente’s comment on Hilary Weston’s appointment as lieutenant governor of Ontario (Footnote 31), as well as her praise for her tenure, is from: Weston, Hilary. No Ordinary Time: My Years as Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor. Toronto: Whitfield Editions, 2007. Page 12.
Hilary Weston’s summary of the symbolic importance of the position of lieutenant governor is from: Ibid. Page 104.
Chapter Three: King Charles III of Canada?
The epigraph is from: Milne, A. A. “Buckingham Palace.” When We Were Very Young. London: Methuen, 1921.
Queen Elizabeth’s comment on Prince Philip is from:
Queen Elizabeth II. Speech to the Guildhall, 1997, quoted in the Daily Telegraph, November 20, 2007.
The article on Prince Philip standing by Queen Elizabeth II for six decades is from: “True Welfare.” Spectator, June 11, 2011.
The excerpt from Henry V (Footnote 41) is from: Shakespeare, William. Henry V, Act 4, Scene i. New York: Signet Classics, 1998.
Max Hastings’s “landmark” essay is from: Hastings, Max. “Why Prince Charles Is Too Dangerous to Be King: In a landmark essay Max Hastings tells why this increasingly eccentric royal could imperil the monarchy.” Daily Mail, December 18, 2010.
Doug Saunders’s comment on Prince Charles’s work Harmony
is from: Saunders, Doug. “Britain’s Crisis of Succession: Charles and the Story Behind the Royal Wedding.” Globe and Mail, April 22, 2011.
The excerpt on new-age medicine (Footnote 42) is from: Freedman, David H. “The Triumph of New-Age Medicine.” Atlantic, July/August 2011.
Michael Valpy’s comments on Prince William and Catherine Middleton, and on Prince Charles as king, are from: Valpy, Michael. “Will Charles Make a Good King? Yes.” Globe and Mail, April 29, 2011.
The excerpts from Prince Charles in the 1994 British Independent Television documentary are quoted in: Dimbleby, Jonathan. The Prince of Wales: A Biography. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1994. Page 332.
Archbishop Carey’s correction of Prince Charles’s comments on “Defender of Faith” is from: Ibid. Page 342.
Prince Charles’s feelings on religion (Footnote 44) are from: Ibid. Page 342.
Prince Charles’s speech at the 250th anniversary of the Board of Deputies of British Jews at the historic Guildhall is quoted from the official website of the British Monarchy: www.royal.gov.uk.
Prince Charles’s January 21, 1993, letter to Tom Shebbeare, then the director of the Prince’s Trust, is from: Dimbleby, Jonathan. The Prince of Wales: A Biography. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1994. Page 376.
Chapter Four: Long to Reign Over Us
The epigraph is from the Canadian Monarchist Online: http://home.interlog.com/~rakhshan/pquotes.html.
Excerpts from Anna Brownell Jameson are from: Jameson, Anna Brownell. Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1836). Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009. Page 139.
Wilfrid Laurier’s comment on Queen Victoria is from: Schull, Joseph. Laurier: The First Canadian. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1965. Page 571.
Arthur Bousfield and Garry Toffoli’s description of King Edward at his Alberta ranch is from: Bousfield, Arthur, and Garry Toffoli. Royal Tours, 1786–2010: Home to Canada. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2010. Page 62.
Queen Elizabeth’s twenty-first-birthday radio broadcast from South Africa is from: Pimlott, Ben. The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II. London: HarperCollins, 1996. Page 224.
Lord Altrincham’s description of the Queen (Footnote 55) is from: Ibid. Page 301.
The description of the July 9, 1982, break-in at the Queen’s residence (Footnote 58) is from: Ibid. Page 580.
The excerpt from Queen Elizabeth’s 1992 speech is from the official website of the British Monarchy: www.royal.gov.uk.
Chapter Five: The Once and Future Crown
The epigraph by Ted Hughes is from the official website of the British Monarchy: www.royal.gov.uk.
The quote from Samuel Johnson (Footnote 64) is from: Johnson, Samuel. The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 14. Troy, New York: Parfraets & Company, 1913. Page 98.
Dr. Christopher McCreery’s comment on the Letters Patent (Footnote 69) is from: McCreery, Christopher. The Order of Canada: Its Origins, History, and Development. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2006. Page 15.
Ralph Heintzman’s essay is from: Heintzman, Ralph. “The Meaning of Monarchy.” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Summer 1977). Page 2.
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Acknowledgements
Some brief parts of this book have appeared in a different form in past issues of Saturday Night magazine during my years there as editor (1987 to 1995), and in both the Globe and Mail and the National Post, where I once worked regularly. As well, a short personal account of the 1953 Coronation appeared in a different form in my book Eminent Canadians: Candid Tales of Then and Now (McClelland & Stewart). Also, in the late spring of 2011, Maclean’s commissioned me to write eight essays on Crown and Country from the period leading up to the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton until after their first tour together across Canada. Some of that material has been incorporated into the overall text. I am grateful for the opportunities all those publications, as well as three British publications (The Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, and the Daily Mail), provided through the Internet to quote from them. I am also grateful for the specific permission of Jonathan Dimbleby and Doubleday Canada to quote from his 1994 biography of Prince Charles (The Prince of Wales: A Life), and HarperCollins and the literary estate of the late Ben Pimlott for some quotes from his 1996 biography of the Queen (The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II).
At the House of Anansi, I owe huge debts to everyone, but especially to Sarah MacLachlan (president), Scott Griffin (saviour), Meredith Dees (who did all the photo and image research), and — most of all — the sensitive, brilliant editing of a messy manuscript by Janie Yoon.
In the course of writing this book, and in the long period leading up to it, I have received all sorts of practical help or insight (or both), for which I am grateful. This assistance has been as wonderful as it has been good-natured and various: from the editors and checkers at Maclean’s to the Van Tullekan family in Go Home Bay, who provided (hydro) electricity on those days when my (solar) electricity supplies were minimal; to the wonderful staff at Clarence House, the official office of the Prince of Wales (who helped to make coverage of Prince William’s marriage to Catherine Middleton so effortless and such fun); and to the Porter’s Lodge at Massey College presided over by the redoubtable Senior Porter, Sgt. Elizabeth Hope.
The incomplete list here of gratefully acknowledged assistance of a similarly wide variety (inadvertent and specific, pro- and anti-monarchy, dead and alive) is alphabetical and not at all based on any priority of help rendered, or status. From each of them, as from so many others, I have learned something in one form or another that led, by some sort of intellectual alchemy or osmosis, to this book:
Rosalie Abella, the late John Black Aird, Lincoln Alexander, Jamie Anderson, Patsy Anderson, the late Peter Anderson, Aubie Angel, Sally Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, Dan Avnon, Andrew Baines, Cornelia Baines, the late St. Clair Balfour, the late June Barrett, James Bartleman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, the late John Bassett, Isabel Bassett, Douglas Bell, Avie Bennett, Richard Berthelsen, Angud Bhalla, Suresh Bhalla, Andrew Binkley, Harriet Binkley, Grant Bishop, Lord Black, Christie Blatchford, Elizabeth Bliss, Molly Blyth, Henry Borden, Lisa Balfour Bowen, Walter Bowen, Cathrin Bradbury, Diana Bradshaw, the late Richard Bradshaw, Alan Broadbent, the late Erik Bruhn, Ann Brumell, Brendy Bury, the late Esmond Butler, Edmund Cape, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, James Carley, Graydon Carter, David Campbell, Kim Campbell, Nanda Cassuci-Bryne, Greg Cerson, Jean Charest, the late Barrie Ramsey Chavel, James Chavel, Matthew Chavel, Jean Chrétien, Jill Clark, Joe Clark, Tom Clark, Austin Clarke, Adrienne Clarkson, Anne Collins, Michael Cooke, Jack Costello, Andrew Coyne, the late A. H. Crosbie, Andrea Crosbie, the late Gertrude Crosbie, Jane Crosbie, John Crosbie, William Crosbie, Brenda Davies, the late Robertson Davies, William Davis, Thomas Delworth, Jack Diamond, the late Barbara Forrester Dickinson, the late Catherine Dickinson, the late John Diefenbaker, Jonathan Dimbleby, John Dirks, the late Richard J. Doyle, Dorothy Dunlop, Stefan Dupré, Danylo Dzwonyk, Frederik Eaton, Noel Edison, Atom Egoyan, Barbara English, Arthur English, Michael Enright, Diane de Fenoyl, Kate Filion, Terence Finlay, Thomas Fitches, Tyler Flatt, the late Eugene Forsey, Allan Fotheringham, Ursula Franklin, Jane Freeman, David Frum, Robert Fulford, Kelly Gale, George Galt, Judith Skelton Grant, John Geiger, Irving Gerstein, Graeme Gibson, Daniel Goldbloom, David Goldbloom, the late Walter Gordon, Allan Gotlieb, Mary Graham, Jack Granatstein, the late George Grant, Charlotte Gray, Rudyard Griffiths, Robin Harris, Wendy Henderson Heasman, Jane Heintzman, Ralph Heintzman, Lisa Henderson, Jane Hilderman, the late Louise Hill, Ernest Hillen, the late Lord Harlow, the late Richard Hatfield, the late Steve Herder, John Honderich, Huang Anlun, J. N. (Pat) Hume, Robert Hyland, Frank Iacobucci, the late Alison Ignatieff, Andrew Ignatieff, the late George Ignatieff, Michael Ignatieff, Eric Jackman, H. N. R. Jackman, Michael Jackson, George Jonas, Serge Joyal, Karen Kain, Patricia Kennedy, Jason Kenny, Craig Kielburger, Baron King, Frank King, Norma King, Ralph King, the late Lincoln Kirstein, Marie Korey, Michael Laine, Peter Latka, Mary Jo Leddy, Michael Levine, Myles Leslie, Joyce Lewis, Peter Lewis, Lord Linley, the late Earl of Longford, Patrick Luciani, Anna Luengo, Anthony Luengo, Joan MacCallum, Christopher MacDonald, P. J. MacDougall, Kevin Macleod, Margaret MacMillan, Brian Maloney, Preston Manning, Dow Marmur, Lorna Marsden, the late Hart Massey, John Massey, the late Vincent Massey, Kenneth McCarter, Christopher McCreery, Barbara McDougall, Ivan McFarlane, the late Pauline McGibbon, Carolyn McIntire-Smyth, the late Norah Michener, the late Roland Michener, Noam Miller, Jacques Monet, the late Barbara Moon, Charles Moore, Brian Mulroney, Darlene Naranjo, David Naylor, Peter C. Newman, Alastair Niven, Ray Novak, Amy Nugent, the late Fabian O’Dea, Shane O’Dea, Sir Christopher Ondaatje, Lady Ondaatje, David Onley, James Orbinsky, the late Bernard Ostry, Sylvia Ostry, Mark Ozon, Cheryl Palmer, Jacques Parizeau, Roger Parkinson, Charles Pascal, Lord Patten, Anthony Pawson, the late E. B. (Bill) Pearce, the late L. B. Pearson, John Perlin, Susan Perren, David Peterson, Heather Peterson, James Peterson, Prince Philip, John Polanyi, Lord Polwarth, Julian Porter, the late Jane Poulson, Neville Poy, Rob Prichard, Jack Rabinovich, Bob Rae, David Reibetanz, Jonathan Reid, Florence Richler, the late Mordecai Richler, Noah Richler, Nancy Ruth, Ann Saddlemyer, Richard Sadleir, John Ralston Saul, the late Jeanne Sauvé, Robin Sears, Norma Sebenyi, Hugh Segal, the late Pierre Sévigny, Geraldine Sharpe, William Shawcross, Gerry Sheff, Brigitte Shim, Jeffrey Simpson, the late Patwant Singh, Bengt Skoggard, Joey Slinger, the late Joseph R. Smallwood, Alexander McCall Smith, Mark Smith, Harley Smyth, the late C. P. Snow, Nancy Southam, John Stackhouse, Janice Stein, Geoffrey Stevens, Amy Stewart, Andrew Stewart, Nalini Stewart, Tim Stewart, Douglas Stoute, Sarmishtra Subramanian, Jennifer Surridge, Queen Sylvia, Dianna Symonds, Christine Symons, Thomas Symons, Norma Szebenyi, Veronica Tennant, Lady Thatcher, the late Lord Thomson, R. H. Thomson, Cindy Caron Thorburn, William Thorsell, Nathan Tidridge, Vincent Tovell, Patricia Treble, the late Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Desmond Tutu, Jean Vanier, Ian Webb, Norman Webster, Galen Weston, Hilary Weston, the late Herbert Whittaker, Kenneth Whyte, Richard Winter, Rose Wolfe, Adam Zimmerman, Moses Znaimer.
Actually, I’m wrong. The priority of importance begins here. To the remarkable women in my life: to Elizabeth Scott MacCallum; to Jessie, Kate, and Clara Fraser, my deepest love and thanks. To my late and hugely missed sister, Barrie Chavel, my unceasing gratitude. (Okay, then, and also to Molly Bloom, a wonderful dog who died during the writing of this book, leaving us all without complaint and loyal to the end. And to Maddy, her successor, who came to us afterwards and soothed me during all the editing, rewriting, fact-checking, and other ordeals.)
About the Author
JOHN FRASER is a Canadian journalist, author, and academic, who has served as Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto since 1995. As a journalist, he has received multiple national awards, and his work has been published in many of the leading international journals and newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, the Christian Science Monitor, Maclean’s, the Guardian, the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, Paris Match, and the New Republic. He is the author of nine works of nonfiction and one novel. He lives in Toronto.
Also by John Fraser
NON-FICTION
Kain and Augustyn
The Chinese: Portrait of a People
Telling Tales
The Crisis of Our Times
Private View
Saturday Night Lives!
Eminent Canadians
WITH ELIZABETH MACCALLUM
Mad About the Bay
FICTION
Stolen China
ANTHOLOGIES
The Writer and Human Rights
China Hands
Punjab, the Fatal Miscalculation
Travelers’ Tales (France)
Northern Lights
About The Publisher
HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”