Page 7 - July_August 2019 Kwasind

REFLECTIONS ON THE MONARCHY IN CANADA
Timothy Walsh
With the portraits and biographies of the Club’s Royal Patrons and Royal Visitors in the St. George Clubhouse being relocated from the Crown & Beaver Bar to near the entrance to Bistro 1852, and the club’s longstanding royal connection, we thought the attached “Reflections on the Monarchy in Canada” might be of interest to Members.
In spite of what you may have seen or heard in the last four years, Queen Elizabeth II is not the longest reigning monarch of Canada. That distinction belongs to Louis XIV of France – the “Sun King”, who reigned for 72 years when Canada was a part of the colony of New France, underscoring the fact that since Europeans first established a permanent settlement in the northern part of North America, Canada has been ruled throughout its existence at various times and in various of its parts by the monarchies of France, England and Great Britain. In fact, Canada has been a monarchy longer than even England itself when one considers the unhappy interregnum of Oliver Cromwell’s republic from 1649 until the restoration of Charles Stuart (Charles II) in 1660.
Newcomers to Canada find it somewhat peculiar that its Head of State resides primarily in a foreign country. That this is a manifestation of the historical evolution of arguably the most successful country on earth can, unfortunately, be sometimes beyond their understanding. For, rather than being simply an anachronism or a legalistic formality, the choice of Canadians to live under a constitutional monarchy
above partisan politics has been achieved by the sacrifice of much blood and treasure through the country’s history. Thousands of United Empire Loyalists fled the United States after the American Revolution, many coming to Canada, in order to live within the British Empire. When the young republic to our south invaded Canada in 1812, its leaders, expecting their armies to be welcomed as “liberators from the yoke of the British crown”, surprisingly found instead a citizenry determined to bravely defend its chosen way of life against enormous odds, which over two years it was ultimately successful in doing with the aid of a few hundred British regular soldiers and its First Nations allies. A hereditary monarchy resolves the dilemma of how to choose one’s head of state: an elected president, for example, will always create a tension with the elected legislative branch of government (witness the current situation in the United States, writ large). An appointed head of state will always be beholden in some way to that particular partisan politician who made the appointment. Only a head of state independent of political influence can truly protect the rights and freedoms of all its citizens.
When considering the opinion of some that a head of state shouldn’t be given their title merely by an accident of birth, it is interesting to reflect on the yearning that even republics like the United States have for dynastic continuity: consider the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes and even the Clintons!
Finally, a constitutional monarchy can only survive and succeed if its incumbents truly appreciate and enhance the aspirations and wellbeing of their subjects, understanding that they reign, they do not rule (a lesson learned the hard way by Charles I in 1649, Louis XVI of France in 1793 and Nicholas II of Russia in 1918) The love and respect of their subjects are ultimately the only guarantors of the continuation of any form of a hereditary monarchy. From the accession of her father to the crown in 1936, the Queen has always known this, evidenced by 300,000 Canadians who came out to welcome their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Wills and Kate) to Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Canada Day, July 1, 2011.
KWASIND • JULY/AUGUST 2019 7
HERITAGE