King by Allan Levine

Author:Allan Levine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO011000, HIS006020
ISBN: 9781553659082
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Published: 2011-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

10

A Man on a Tightrope

Before going down to my bed room, I knelt and prayed that I might be able to renounce anything that would stand in the way of a complete surrender of self to God and my country, and that I might be given strength and guidance to carry on.–THE DIARY OF WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING, September 9, 1939

EUROPE MAY HAVE BEEN moving towards a bloody abyss in the spring of 1939, but Mackenzie King had far bigger issues to consider and none more so than the flower scheme at Quebec City for the arrival of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Following months of often frustrating discussions back and forth between Ottawa and London, King had prevailed with British officials, who he had caustically commented in his diary were “still living in the reign of the Stuarts” when it came to seeing Canada as an autonomous Commonwealth nation rather than a seventeenth-century colony. He was to be in charge of the royal tour and be the “face” of Canada, rather than the governor general, Lord Tweedsmuir. Understandably, King took this role very seriously.

The prime minister had devoted countless hours to working out the protocol, dinner arrangements, even the vehicles to which the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting were to be assigned, in addition to a thousand other minute details that had to be deliberated on for the tour. People noticed. John Dafoe sarcastically remarked in a letter to Free Press managing editor George Ferguson that King likely had not been paying attention to the recent grave reports from Europe because “his mind is running on really important things such as—well let’s say the kind of pillow the Queen will rest her head on as she travels through Canada.” And, lo and behold, the prime minister had missed the fact that the flowers ordered for the King and Queen’s first luncheon were to be Tory and Union Nationale blue. “This I know, will be resented by our Liberal friends, as it will be construed as though it was intended for the Government of Quebec,” he wrote in his diary on April 25. At that moment, he stopped his dictation to Edouard Handy and made a phone call personally changing the colour of the flowers to more respectable Liberal red. Satisfied, he continued, “How true it is that in politics,” he added, “it is what we prevent even more than what we accomplish that tells in the end.”

King had reason to be nervous. This was, after all, the first time a reigning British monarch had set foot in Canada. On May 17, he and Ernest Lapointe, looking like two plump peacocks dressed in their Windsor uniforms and ostrich-plumed hats, greeted the royal couple as they disembarked. Sounding much like a knight at King Arthur’s court, the prime minister declared, “Welcome, Sire, to Your Majesty’s realm of Canada.” Lord Tweedsmuir had boarded the ship before it docked and was more than happy to remain out of the way, as King wanted and protocol required.

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