And Back
Leaving the busy harbour of New Westminster behind them, the King and Queen travelled up the valley of the Fraser River, the source of which lay almost seven hundred miles away among the ice fields of the Rocky Mountains. As they passed in the brilliant sunshine, the shore was lined with little ships covered with flags, their decks crowded with people. An ancient Mississippi paddle boat served as a viewing platform for several hundred more. From there, as darkness fell, the Royal Blue train travelled on by way of tunnels and bridges that led through range after range of mountain peaks. Every quarter of a mile or so along the lonely route, watchmen stood with lanterns. Suddenly the train, brilliantly lit and with a searchlight at the front, would appear out of the darkness. A few moments later it was gone again.
Early the next morning, they passed Mount Robson, which, at 12,972 feet, is the highest mountain in the Rockies, stopping briefly to take on water. Then it was on towards Jasper National Park, an area of outstanding natural beauty that spans some four thousand square miles and lies more than 3,400 feet above sea level. They were put up at the Jasper Park Lodge, a collection of log cabins set in beautiful parkland that formed a luxury hotel run by the Canadian National Railways.
The royal couple were given the Outlook Cabin, which stood somewhat apart from the rest: built entirely of pine logs peeled and varnished to preserve their natural colour, it had room for eight guests and two servants. The King and Queen had never experienced anything quite like it: the floors were covered with bearskin rugs, while curiously shaped pieces of wood were used for lamp standards and to support the beams. Although it was too early in the year for flowers to grow naturally at that altitude, the beds around the cabins had been specially planted with hothouse flowers the evening before they arrived. Several Mounties stood guard at the entrance, where a flagpole had been specially erected: as the royal couple were driven up in their open car, the Royal Standard was hoisted.
Taking a short break from their official duties, they stayed for a day and a half, resting and sightseeing, and visited a local gorge, glacier and beaver dam. Out walking during the day, they came across a bear with her young cub, which the King filmed with his cine camera as it climbed a tree. Another bear was found scavenging for food under the dining car of the royal train and had to be chased away by the guards. That evening, after a quiet dinner for the two of them, the royal couple sat in front of a miniature projector and ran through the footage of their journey the King had shot so far. He then edited it with the help of one of the hotel porters. It was to be their last moment of tranquillity before they were to start their sea voyage home two weeks later.
While the King was away talking to veterans, Mackenzie King asked the Queen if she had enjoyed the rest. “Rest?” she exclaimed. Mackenzie King thought they had rather overdone all the walking and climbing. “The King looks to me much fresher and more rested than at the beginning of the trip,” he wrote in his diary. “The Queen seems a little tired. Does not look it but I can notice she has lost a little of the constant smile which she wore at the beginning.”1
At 9.30 a.m. on the next day, 2nd June, the royal train pulled out of Jasper station, bound for Edmonton, capital of Alberta, where the now familiar flurry of engagements was squeezed into the period from 3.30 p.m. to 10 p.m. They included a trip to Portage Avenue, one of the strangest streets in the world, a stretch of smooth paving two and a quarter miles long without a single building on either side. The street had been built in the boom years of the early part of the century, but the outbreak of the First World War checked the development of the city. Its main function had since become to serve as a track for roller-skating children, although it was occasionally used as an improvised aeroplane runway: in 1931, Wiley Post and Harold Gatty had made use of it during their record-breaking flight round the world. Two years later, Post had done the same when he repeated the feat solo.
This time, however, Portage Avenue was being employed for a very different purpose. Hoping to cash in on enthusiasm for the royal trip, the enterprising local authority had erected six-tier grandstands with seating for 68,000 people along its length, which it hoped to sell at one dollar each – quite a vote of confidence in the lure of the royal visit, given that the population of the city was just 89,000. Their gamble paid off. The grandstands were packed, the front rows filled with thousands of schoolchildren who broke into loud cheers as the royal party passed. For Mackenzie King it was “the finest sight in the whole trip thus far”.2 The royal couple drove up one side of the avenue to the far end, where there was a display of different types of aeroplane, and then all the way back again.
As they made their way to the legislative buildings, there was a terrible crush at one point when they stopped en route to talk to some patients at a hospital. Mackenzie King was afraid the crowds would get the better of the situation, but they managed eventually to get through. There were more crowds at the railway station to see them off as they left that evening after dinner with members of the provisional government.
There was a similar outburst of popular enthusiasm at the several stops the King and Queen made the following day: at Watrous, a few miles east of Saskatoon, home to only a few hundred people, a crowd of twenty-five thousand turned out, some of whom had travelled hundreds of miles to see the royal couple with their own eyes. Place of honour on the platform was given to a huge stuffed buffalo in a glass case. At another point, where there was only a single grain elevator and water tower, there were eight thousand visitors. One of the journalists on board the pilot train asked one of them how large the local population was. “Why, nobody lives here,” came the reply.3
The visit scheduled that evening for Melville, a little town of four thousand people located 170 miles farther east, looked like it might be more controversial: many of the locals were originally from Germany, Czechoslovakia or other parts of Eastern Europe, and the town had a reputation for being a “centre for communism”. Any concerns proved misplaced: the residents turned out to be just as enthusiastic royalists as everyone else: police estimated the crowd at between forty and fifty thousand, all of them squeezed around a small raised platform onto which the royal couple were to step from the train. To control them there were just two lines of volunteer ex-servicemen and a handful of Mounties.
As the train pulled in, five bands struck up, gigantic spotlights played on the faces of spectators and the sky was lit up by fireworks. What had been intended as yet another of many short, ten-minute appearances turned into something more substantial. As the jubilant crowds chanted “We want the King”, “We want the Queen” and “Come down to us, Your Majesties, we love you”, the royal couple stepped down from the dais that had been prepared for them and plunged into the middle of the crowd. To the horror of their security detail, they then spent ten minutes edging their way through the lines of people, stopping to chat as they went. The Queen was surrounded by women, some of whom kissed her as she walked past; others held up their babies for her to kiss. The King got his share of kisses too, as well as thumps on the back from burly farmers.
The royal party were surprised by the size of the turnout. “We found ourselves simply lost in amazement,” said Mackenzie King. “I never saw a more radiant look on the face of the Queen. She and the King threw up their hands in acknowledgement of the cheers and welcome given them.”4 Onlookers were impressed to note that, through it all, they retained their quiet dignity. “They dealt with each onslaught on their good nature with the same regal savoir-faire that they would adopt in formally shaking the hand of a uniformed official,” noted Gordon.5
The plan had been for them to spend the night on board the train parked in a siding. But it soon became clear to organizers that if they did so then the crowds would stay too. Loudspeakers implored the spectators to go home, but no one showed any sign of intending to do so and therefore, after hurried consultations among railway officials, it was decided the train should set off, go round a curve in the track and then stop a few miles away, out of sight, where the royal couple would have the chance of an uninterrupted night’s sleep. The tactic worked: after a tumultuous farewell under a great yellow prairie moon, the crowds gradually dispersed and embarked on the long journey home – though it took three hours for the last car to go.
The next day, a Sunday, included church at the town of Portage la Prairie and a second, unscheduled stop in Winnipeg. During their first visit to the city as they travelled westwards, time constraints had forced them to cancel a planned meeting with a hundred disabled former servicemen. One of the men sent the King a letter pointing out how disappointed they had been, and so he ordered the new stop.
That was not the only change in the itinerary: the next day, learning that they would be passing near to some of the largest nickel mines in the world, the Queen suggested they make an unscheduled visit to Sudbury, Ontario, which lies almost eight hundred miles east of Winnipeg. Telegrams were dispatched from the train to Sudbury, throwing the town into a frenzy of excitement. All work was immediately stopped in the mines of the International Nickel Company of Canada: one of the largest electric lifts in the Frood Mine, the biggest producer of nickel in the world, was hastily polished, and the lift platform, which lay more than two thousand feet below the surface, was whitewashed.
Company police armed with revolvers stood guard over the mine when the royal party arrived just after sunset. The royal couple changed into protective clothing – the King into regulation khaki overalls and the Queen into a special white waterproof silk outfit – and, wearing miners’ helmets on their heads, they faced a barrage of photographers as they emerged from the changing room. “I’m afraid this is not a bit stylish,” the Queen laughed, as she posed for pictures.6 All the same, she fixed her helmet at an angle, giving herself something of a jaunty appearance.
Accompanied by the general manager and the general superintendent, they were escorted to the top of No. 3 shaft. They stepped into the cage, which then descended the 2,800-foot shaft at 1,500 feet a minute, making the royal ears pop. From there they boarded one of the trains used by the miners to take them to and from the rock face. Sitting back to back, their legs covered with rugs against the cold, they rode 1,800 feet to a point where two miners, named Hadley and Simpson, were digging into the ore. After an inspection tour lasting forty minutes, the clanging of a bell announced their return to the surface, where they toured the mine head, dodging the clouds of mosquitoes that were typical of the area. The royal couple “both seemed greatly to enjoy the adventure”, thought Mackenzie King.7
A small group of newspaper reporters from the train had been given permission to accompany the King and Queen down the mine but, just as they were changing, they were told by mine officials they wouldn’t be allowed down after all. Nevertheless, one enterprising figure, H.R. Pratt, editor of the Kent Messenger, managed to slip through: the mine officials thought he was with the royal party, and the Mounties were convinced he was with a mine official. Afterwards, he shared his scoop with his colleagues.
The Canadian portion of the tour was drawing to a close: after boarding the train, which was waiting at Garson crossing, the King and Queen spent the night at a quiet little station called South Parry. The next day – 6th June, the last before they crossed the border – saw a series of short halts at little towns including Kitchener, which had been known as Berlin before the First World War and was largely populated by people of German origin, who nevertheless gave the royal visitors an enthusiastic welcome.
There were also some unscheduled stops: at Washago, where the train halted at 9 a.m. to take on water, thirty thousand people chanted “We want the King” continuously for three minutes. He dutifully appeared on the back platform to be greeted by a voice from the crowd shouting, “Hi-ya King?”
“I’m fine,” the King called back smiling, apparently now used to the more informal manner in which he was greeted by his Canadian subjects. “And how are you?”8
As the train moved off, people broke through barriers that had been specially erected along the track and rang alongside through the swampy ground – splashing in muddy water that sometimes reached up to their knees. One or two stumbled and fell but picked themselves up again and, undaunted, went on running. Finally the train crossed over a bridge and around a curve, and the crowd reluctantly made their way home.
From then it was back through Toronto and on towards the border. That evening, as they passed through the outskirts of Windsor, Ontario, they had the first sight of the skyline of an American city: across the Detroit River were visible the skyscrapers and an electric sign that proclaimed: “Detroit Welcomes Their Majesties the King and Queen”. “What a wonderful sight,” said the Queen as she and the King stood and looked in awe together.9
A foretaste of the reception that they would be given on the other side came when they stopped later in Windsor, where the crowds of locals were joined by some two hundred thousand Americans “in a welcome so uproarious that it almost looked at one time as though the crowd would lift up the royal train and carry it bodily away”, as one observer put it.10 Before crossing into the United States, though, they had another day of visits on Canadian soil: in one of the most gruelling parts of the tour, they were to stop in no fewer than six towns in southern Ontario, each of them packed with crowds of wildly enthusiastic people.
There was also an awkward issue to resolve: Lascelles mentioned almost in passing to the Queen that when they crossed the border, for protocol reasons, they would have to leave behind the Mounties who had been guarding them during the trip. The Queen suddenly became more agitated and assertive than Mackenzie King had seen her for the whole journey, insisting that the Mounties’ presence made her feel more secure, and they could not possibly be left behind. The King then weighed in on her side, declaring, “We must have them. We cannot think of going to the States without them.”11 But his aides warned that taking the Canadian police with them might lead to “real jealousies and difficulties”, since it would look as if they didn’t trust the Americans – a point that could be seized on by the press there. There was talk of taking up the issue with the President, but the King and Queen eventually backed down for fear of causing an incident. It was also pointed out that there wouldn’t be enough room on the train for two sets of security to sleep anyway.
They arrived at the Canadian side of Niagara just after 7 p.m., slightly later than scheduled, after being delayed by the thousands of people who turned out to greet them along the route from St Catherine’s, the penultimate stop of the day. They viewed the Falls from Table Rock and then went to a small dinner party at the General Brock Hotel, where they stepped out onto the balcony to acknowledge the cheers of ten thousand schoolchildren gathered outside. Later they returned to watch the Falls illuminated by coloured lights.
Then it was a short drive to the station for the brief journey across the border. Despite the past gruelling two days, they seemed cheerful and refreshed. As one admiring correspondent for the New York Times remarked, “Fresh as a debutante before her first big party, Queen Elizabeth wound up a strenuous day today with her costume as crisp and her manner as gracious as if she were beginning – instead of entering the final phase of – her tour.”12
While the King and Queen had been greeted with enthusiasm wherever they went, security remained a concern, especially for the next stage of the trip. Since their arrival in Canada, Chief Constable Albert Canning of Scotland Yard, who was travelling on board the Royal Blue train, had been watching with concern the progress through America of Seán Russell, a militant veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising and Irish Civil War, who the previous year had become chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Canning’s concern was understandable. On 12th January, the IRA, under Russell’s leadership, had “declared war” on Britain in the name of the Irish people and given the government in London an ultimatum: pull all British forces out of Ireland within four days or they would start a campaign to sabotage the military and commercial life of Great Britain. The deadline came and went. Four days later came the first attacks, in London, Warwickshire and Northumberland. There were dozens more in the months that followed, on power stations, post offices, banks and railway stations, not just in the capital but in towns and cities across the country. Although the IRA’s main target was infrastructure, several people were killed and injured during the campaign, which was known as the “S-plan” (S for sabotage) and was to continue after the outbreak of war into early 1940. The group’s leaders had also started exploring the possibility of establishing links with the Nazis. The government was naturally worried about the possibility of “Irish outrages” in America to coincide with the royal visit.
That April, with the bombing campaign in full swing, Russell had set off to America on a propaganda tour to raise his own profile and that of the IRA. The forthcoming royal visit appeared to provide a potentially valuable opportunity for publicity. Once on American soil, Russell had given a series of inflammatory speeches to his sympathetic Irish American audience, in which he admitted to ordering the bombings and vowed to continue doing so until British troops left the country and his men were released from jail. “A state of war exists between England and Ireland and will continue until the British troops are withdrawn,” he declared.
Unknown to Russell, he was being trailed by American G-men at the behest of Canning (who himself arrived in New York on 20th April, bearing letters of introduction to Lewis J. Valentine, the city’s commissioner of police, and J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI). They finally sprang into action on 5th June, when Russell boarded a train in Chicago and arrived in Detroit, just over the border from Windsor, the day before the Royal Blue train was due to pass. He was arrested by three federal officers as he was about to get into a taxi outside Michigan Central Station and charged with entering the United States illegally.
Joseph McGarrity, from Philadelphia, a leader of an Irish American society who was with Russell at the time of his arrest, was indignant at his treatment. Speaking to journalists, he denied that he and Russell had any intention of going to Windsor. “As for the visit of the King and Queen, if you read the papers you must know that the Irish Republican Army does not kill people,” he declared. “There should be no apprehension there.”13
Despite the arrest, which was kept quiet by authorities for several hours, journalists covering the trip noticed clear signs that security was being tightened. At Windsor, more guards were in evidence than at any time during the royal trip. Authorities there also accepted an offer from Detroit to supply detectives, who mingled with the crowd. It was the first time US police had ever guarded a British monarch.
Russell’s arrest outraged many members of the Irish-American community and culminated in protests by seventy-six members of Congress of Irish descent, who demanded an explanation from Roosevelt and threatened to boycott the King’s planned visit to Congress. The police’s action nevertheless clearly came as a relief to Canning and his men. Asked if he had any apprehension about security during the American leg of the trip, he replied: “Not so much now.”