Vancouver Province

December 7, 2000

Even in New Zealand, where I’m presently doing my best to fool the famous North Americans from Sonomo Creek, California, the Rainbow Trout … even in ultra British New Zealand there is talk of abolishing the monarchy. Australia is, of course, on an inexorable path to a republic.

It’s pretty hard to get worked up on the subject sufficiently to want to take to the streets or even write a letter to the editor. And that’s what might postpone action indefinitely. The Royal institution just sort of rolls along with the occasional wave of scandal interrupting it’s aimless journey, serving as a decent legal fiction around which to build the anachronistic parliamentary system which vests dictatorial power for five years practicing only a form of democracy when elections roll around.

But there are interesting times ahead for the ancient institution as in 2002, a little over a year away, the Queen celebrates her 50^th Jubilee with the Brits are planning a big bash. The trouble is, how do you celebrate an institution whose days of glory ended long before the Queen took the throne and which exists as a sort of passive reminder of days of yore, days many of her Commonwealth subjects would as soon forget?

It was different with Victoria – her great Jubilees came with Imperial glory at its most lustrous. The sun never sank on the Empire and the British patiently bore the "White Man’s Burden." Even for the Jubilee of George V which I remember, there was still India and Canadians sang a version of O Canada which said "at Britain’s side, whate’er betide, unflinchingly we’ll stand". But that stuff is all behind us now. There’s not even a Royal Mail anymore, for heaven’s sake, and the Queen’s representative has become a political hack in the personal privilege of the Prime Minister to use as a pay-off.

In the Jubilee Year the Brits are going to develop an education program for all students aged 11-16 so that they can look back to the glorious days of the Empah and all that, don’t you know. Except the Empah is gone and many of the Commonwealth don’t have the Queen as Head of State. Moreover, they’re not exactly thrilled by stories of the thin red line and the "British Square" fighting off, with Maxim guns, spear chucking blacks. While it can be argued, and will no doubt be, that India and Pakistan have the British to thank for many of their tools of governance and their justice system, this may not be the best of times to trot out rajahs and princes on elephants to show off the glories of the Raj to the pathetically poor.

I suspect that Royalty will be given a year or two off. Because there is genuine affection for the Queen herself – though not especially for her consort or her brats (surely it’s too much to hope that the Queen Mum will still be with us) – I suspect the Commonwealth will generally play along with whatever party is planned. I also suspect that in the afterglow the notion of having an English Queen rule in places that are no longer dominated by people of British stock will be carefully examined.

And what, then, about Canada? There is no longer an "English" Canada and hasn’t been for decades. We don’t sing or indeed ever play God Save The Queen anymore. We have a sanitized version of O Canada. The Maple Leaf Forever, with its flagrant anti Quebec phrases, hasn’t been heard since World War II. The large majority of Canadians are from non British backgrounds and those who are and feel strong ties to Britain are a dying breed whose children are utterly indifferent to ties with the monarchy.

What will not happen is an easy abolition of the monarchy and the battleground, when the battle begins, will probably be in Prince Edward Island.

Why our municipality sized province?

Because under our 1982 Constitution it takes the unanimous consent of all provinces to abandon the monarchy and one does not need too vivid an imagination to imagine the spud islanders having a damned good time cocking a snook at the rest of us as they defend the royal institution.

It could happen, then, that the British Monarchy could be out to pasture everywhere else, even in Blighty, yet be alive if not entirely well here in Canada.