Queen Elizabeth II had an air of magic about her

Television is such a big part of our lives these days that almost every casual conversation usually includes references to the evening news, the hockey game, or something like that. However, in the 1950s, the television was a new gadget, not yet present in every home and still behind the radio.

My earliest television memory is of going to what was then called a “news theater” and watching black and white images of a beautiful young woman getting into a golden carriage, escorted by members of the my father’s regiment of mounted guards, in plumes and shining breastplates. I was all five and I thought it was magic.

It’s hard to believe she’s gone. But it is, and Canada now has a new king. May he somehow find the magic she had. Because that was it, something indefinable and incomprehensible for so many people. Magic, by definition.

It is certain that the media will soon start to publish opinion pieces on “the abandonment of the queen of Great Britain”. Such authors invariably feed the discussion by using such terminology: the “British crown”, the “British royal family” and so on. This tends to automatically slant the reader’s thinking, even before any arguments are made.

In fact, the Canadian Crown is a distinct and entirely separate institution, and has been since 1982, when the Constitution Act came into effect. Not a penny of tax money goes to Britain to pay for the monarchy.

Queen Elizabeth has brought a lot of daylight magic to her visits to Canada. People from all over the world have flocked here over the past decades to seek a better life and to escape oppression and despair, and the Crown of Canada has welcomed them. While other countries seek to build walls, our Prime Minister shows up at the airport to welcome refugees from a war zone with the words: “Welcome to Canada”.

Incredible, really.

We built this country in the envy of the world. And being a constitutional monarchy in fact, and always has been. It’s not broken, so we don’t have to try to fix it. May he, and the magic, continue.

Tony Keen, Oro Station, Monarchist League of Canada

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