Canada on the Doorstep by William Rayner

Author:William Rayner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2011-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

We leave your shores after some of the most inspiring and illuminating weeks in our lives. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the tropics to the Arctic, lies a large part of the earth where there is no possibility of war between neighbours, whose people are wholly dedicated to the pursuits of peace, a pattern to all men of how civilized nations should live together … By God’s grace yours may yet be the example which all the world will follow.

The queen described how touched she had been by the women and children she had met and their warm welcome. “This wonderful tour of ours has given me memories that the passage of time will never dim,” she said. “Au revoir et que Dieu vous benisse.”

King George took away more than fond memories from Canada. He was quite a different ruler than the one who had disembarked at Quebec City a month earlier. Now, instead of adhering to the rigid view of the monarchy that consumed his forebears, he had realized that a sovereign must keep in touch with the people. During some key conversations with Prime Minister King, His Majesty intimated that he was now much closer to his subjects. He was also more comfortable with the job that had been thrust upon him.

And by the time the Empress of Britain, with the king and queen waving from the topmost deck, headed for a brief visit to the former Dominion of Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic, the press — and most certainly the people of Canada — had revised their view of the Empire. One correspondent, while noting that King George was “a statesman in his own right,” emphasized that the Royal Couple “are just good, decent people, modest and unassuming, and with a simple, natural air about them that makes you like them.”

Even more fulsome — and certain that Canada was firmly wedded to the mother country — was Globe and Mail staff writer Douglas R. Oliver. Here is how he described the last moments of the Royal Visit on June 15, 1939:

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