Fifty Years the Queen. Arthur Bousfield
culture and tradition all have some contribution to make, and when I think of the diversity of these factors in Canada today and the achievements that have grown from their union, I feel proud and happy to be Queen of such a nation.”
While Sunday was a day for Church, Monday was for State. And a grand day it was. The Fathers of Confederation had declared that the government of Canada was to be carried out by “Her Majesty personally or by her representative duly authorised”. As such a day had been for her father in 1939, this was a day for the new Queen to carry out the government of Canada personally. The Governor-General, Vincent Massey recalled,
During my time in Ottawa everything possible was done to bring home the position of the Sovereign in our national life. The Queen's visit in 1957 gave this reality. When she opened Parliament, she was acting, in the fullest sense, as the Queen of Canada. At this time she presided over a meeting of her Canadian Privy Council and in her capacity as Sovereign approved an order-in-council.
I cannot claim any personal credit for these arrangements because they were the result of government decisions, but within the limits of my post I was happy to give them the fullest encouragement. I may say this: both the governments [Liberal and Conservative] that were successively in office during my time were at one in their desire that we should demonstrate in every possible way the fact that the Queen is Queen of Canada. There was never the slightest shadow of disagreement on this vital principle.
The Queen and members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, including the Duke of Edinburgh (to the Queen's left), who was admitted to the Council at this meeting, and the Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker (to the Queen's Right), gather at Rideau Hall for a meeting chaired by the Queen.
Massey's point was well made. It was the Liberal government of the venerable monarchist Louis St-Laurent which had initiated the Queen's tour. In the 1957 general election the Liberals were unexpectedly defeated, and now it was the Conservatives under the dynamic and charismatic monarchist John Diefenbaker who carried it out.
The meeting of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada took place at 10:00 a.m. at Government House on that historic Thanksgiving Day, chaired by Her Majesty The Queen. Some voices had suggested that it was not correct British constitutional practice, for a monarch to chair a Privy Council meeting, but Diefenbaker saw the larger principle of identifying the Queen with the workings of her Canadian government and brushed aside such pedantry. As there was no constitutional prohibition, the Queen would chair the Council. Mr Diefenbaker added that “The Queen of Canada is a term which we like to use because it utterly represents her role on this occasion”.
Mr Diefenbaker also used the occasion to honour the Duke of Edinburgh. In February of 1957 the Queen had made the Duke a Prince of the United Kingdom, restoring the dignity of “Prince” which he had given up in 1947 as a Prince of Greece and Denmark. On 3 February 1953, during discussion of the Queen's new Royal Style and Title for Canada in the House of Commons, an opposition M.P. from Lake Centre named John Diefenbaker had suggested that “we should make Her Majesty acquainted with the fact that we as her subjects in Canada would like to see her consort, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, created a prince of the Commonwealth to bind us together ever closer in heart and soul and to have in him as in her a link with all parts of the Commonwealth”. It was an imaginative idea that, although not adopted, in fact described the life that lay before the consort of the Queen. Now, as the Canadian Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker was able to advise Her Majesty to grant a Canadian honour to the Prince by admitting him to the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. The Prince was duly sworn in that morning, taking his oath before his Canadian Queen.
Prince Philip was also honoured that morning by becoming an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the organisation established by the Marquis of Lome, who was also the Prince's great-great-uncle as well as the Queen's. This event took place at Government House following the Privy Council meeting, as did the reception for the heads of Commonwealth and foreign diplomatic missions and their wives.
At 2:30 p.m., in brilliant autumn sunshine, a procession left Rideau Hall. Modest in scale by British standards perhaps, the procession was still glorious in appearance by any standard. Leading and following the state landau were contingents of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—48 in all—in their famous scarlet serge tunics, blue breeches and tan stetsons, riding noble coal-black horses, with red and white pennons fluttering from the upright lances in their right hands. Their predecessors had brought the Queen's Peace to the West, now they were bringing the Queen herself to Parliament.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh proceed through the gothic halls of the Canadian Parliament led by the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod and followed by John Diefenbaker.
The open maroon landau with the Royal Arms emblazoned on the sides was a gift to Canada from Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada 1904 to 1910. He had brought it with him from Australia where it had been made. It was Lord Grey who had coined the expression “the Maple Crown” to describe the Canadian Monarchy, and it seemed an apt phrase as the Queen rode in his landau while the sun lit up the maple trees of Ottawa in their fall colour.
Painting by Guy Laliberte depicts the Queen reading the Speech from the Throne as she becomes the first monarch to open the Canadian Parliament in person. Her Majesty sits on the Throne of Canada with the Duke of Edinburgh on the Consort's Throne and the Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker on a chair to the Queen's right. The painting belongs to Gordon Schmidt of Hanover, Ontario and is displayed at the Canadian Royal Heritage Museum located in the birthplace of John Diefenbaker in Neustadt, Ontario.
But most splendid of all was the figure riding in the landau. The Queen was resplendent in her Coronation gown, embroidered with the rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, the shamrock of Ireland and the leek of Wales, the wattle flower of Australia, the fern of New Zealand, the protea of South Africa, an ear of wheat for Pakistan, the lotus flowers for India and Ceylon and, in green silk bordered with gold bullion thread and veined in crystal, the maple leaves of Canada. In her hair Her Majesty wore a tiara that had been a silver wedding gift to Queen Alexandra and had also been worn by Queen Mary, who bequeathed it to Elizabeth II. The dress provided a deliberate symbolic link between the Coronation ceremony and the parliamentary one.
Past thousands of cheering Canadians the procession travelled the traditional route along Sussex Drive and Wellington Street to Parliament Hill, where the largest crowd ever seen on the hill had gathered. The Queen was en route to open the twenty-third Parliament, the first monarch to open a Canadian Parliament in person.
Once inside the gothic halls of Parliament—Westminster in the Wilderness it had been dubbed in the previous century—the party was led at a dignified pace by the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. Accompanied by her consort and attended by the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Senate and military officers, the Queen reached the red Senate Chamber and proceeded up the centre aisle past the senators and invited diplomats and guests and past the scarlet and ermine robed justices of the Supreme Court. She then ascended the low dais and occupied the Throne of Canada.
When the Commons had attended at the Bar of the Senate, Her Majesty addressed the Senate and Commons in the Speech from the Throne opening the new Parliament: “I greet you as your Queen, together we constitute the Parliament of Canada.” She concluded her speech by recalling the words of the first Elizabeth, “Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves.' And now, in the New World I say to you that it is my wish that in the years before me I may so reign in Canada and be so remembered.”
It was an historic moment in the story of Canada and the life of Her Majesty—the Queen in Parliament, but all such moments are both the beginning of new chapters and the continuation of earlier episodes in the life of both Queen and Country.
Even the tour itself was not yet complete. Still to come was the evening's reception at Rideau Hall when the