The Queen chose Moose Jaw rather than Manhattan
National Post, 11 September 2022
Her long life as Queen followed her first death as Elizabeth Mountbatten
Moose Jaw rather than Manhattan. That’s how the monarch at the millennium managed to fulfill her mission for more than seventy years.
As Her Late Majesty’s reign extended to ever more astonishing lengths, it was that fact to which this column returned again and again. Queen Elizabeth II visited Moose Jaw more often than she did Manhattan. The former was part of her realms; the latter not. She was the Queen of Canada and chose to exercise that duty and serve her people over the perquisites of her position.
The Queen’s last public statement was in her role as Queen of Canada, a statement of condolences to “those who have lost loved ones in the attacks that occurred this past weekend in Saskatchewan.” As she was working to the very end, it is entirely plausible that she reviewed the statement in the last of her red boxes, which she faithfully went through every day since 1952. Only on Christmas Day did she give herself a reprieve.
And when those official papers advised her of the horror in Saskatchewan, she did not need to be briefed on where it was or who the people were. Her Late Majesty had visited there six times, once as a princess and five times as the Queen.
“I mourn with all Canadians at this tragic time,” her statement said.
The key word is “with.” Not a bad summary of her service to Canada — she came to share in our joys and griefs, in times of both national celebration and anxiety. She learned well the difficult lessons of the last queen’s reign, her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. The stability of a monarch reigning over her subjects depends to a great deal upon her willingness to be with and amongst those same subjects.
Ten years ago I had the honour of being invited to the unveiling of the Diamond Jubilee window on the Senate side of the centre block of Parliament in Ottawa. The stained glass depicts our two Queens who celebrated diamond jubilees — Victoria and Elizabeth II. In 2012, it was already becoming difficult to say anything original about her outstanding service. That we have been repeating ourselves for a decade does not make any of it less true.
Her astonishing longevity, lived out largely in little acts of service — a plaque unveiling here, an walkabout there — was the answer to the various crises that afflicted the House of Windsor. Choosing daily the duty of the moment over the attractive indulgence of desire or appetite, was the stalwart service which saw her, and the monarchy, through the worst.
The abdication crisis of King Edward VIII? She outlived the Duke of Windsor by fifty years.
The annus horribilis of 1992, when three of the royal marriages fell apart and Windsor Castle went up in flames? Thirty years in the past.
The destructive melodrama of Charles and Diana? Twenty-five years to the day after Diana’s funeral, the Queen appointed her latest prime minister, her fifteenth, at Balmoral. She died two days later.
Continue reading at the National Post.