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Yes, yes, I know. The institution is a relic, the new king is a dweeb who’s been shuffling around for 70 years as tabloid fodder, we’re fed up with it, so let’s get rid of it.
A couple of points.
Our dyspepsia is more about us and our modern drift than about King Charles. After all, what fundamental institution — government, church, business, police, courts, media, etc., etc. — is not subject to some version of the same scorching talk?
Not that some of it is not deserved, but I wish the pollsters who gather up the negativity would add a question: Having got rid of all this annoying stuff, what would you replace it with? Much mumbling in response, I suspect, but there are ominous signs out there, notably Trumpism (and its feebler knock-off, Poilièvrism, in Canada.)
Secondly, for those who dream of a Canadian republic, here’s the bad news: like it or not, Canada would be the last to let go of the Crown, no matter how weak our affection gets.
The deeper story about the British Crown, far beyond the grasp of the breaking news, is that it’s the second of the three dominant institutions that have made the West what it is: the papacy, the Crown, and now the American presidency — all under fire. Unless we have a better story handy, their decline is our decline.
It was in Britain, away from the turmoil of the continent, that the democratic model, in the form of Parliament under the Crown, first came to fruition, mostly peacefully. It was only partly modified elsewhere, notably in the United States and France, where their versions were born in violence.
Amid all this there’s the strange case of Canada, unwittingly the most royalist of all, with the Crown supported by its erstwhile enemies.
Charles’s most positive reviews came from an unusual quarter, given the history. Here’s Perry Bellegarde, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (a view echoed by Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, herself Indigenous): “The power of the monarch is a modern one, because he has the ability to bring people together. He can convene CEOs, prime ministers, presidents and Indigenous leaders to work on the issues that really bind us together, like climate change and biodiversity loss.”
The backstory is that the treaties signed with the Crown in the 1700s that have underpinned recent advances by Canada’s native population are still in force, as judged by the Supreme Court.
The Crown was OK, says Bellegarde. It’s only after Canada was formed in 1867 that the racist policies with genocidal intent really started. As for the treaties, “they will last as long as the sun shines and the rivers flow.” The Crown, he implies, will last as long.
Then there’s the even stranger case of French Canada.
When Pierre Trudeau repatriated the Constitution from Britain back in 1982, Quebec didn’t sign (and still hasn’t). René Lévesque, premier of a separatist government, was asked about the irony of it all: the most anti-royalist province of all was resisting bringing the constitution home from Britain. Why?
Levésque’s famously pithy answer: “I trust the Queen more than I trust Pierre Trudeau.”
Dumping the monarchy (even if only to transfer its function to the governor general as a Canadian monarch) would be nearly impossible. It would take a unanimous vote of both the Commons and the Senate, plus the support of all the provinces.
If it ever got that far, Quebec would likely object for the same reasons Levésque did. It would smell a rat — a pileup of English provinces against Quebec, with the division of powers at issue and maybe separatism up again. No prime minister is going to touch that.
There’s a deeper backdrop to this, too. Back in the 1990s, I was watching a separatist filmmaker on Radio-Canada — who had vowed to “find the truth once and for all” about “la conquête,” the 1759 British victory on the Plains of Abraham that has been a bee in the Quebec nationalist bonnet ever since — express his complete discomfiture. All he had been able to find in the original records was “fulsome praise for the British authorities.”
The “habitants” hated the tyrannical French regime. The British were apparently more easygoing. In 1775, they endeared themselves even more with the Quebec Act, which gave the French-Canadian population full rights — one of the Crown’s finer moments, although one that also inflamed the American colonists, anti-Catholic bigotry being one of the drivers of the American revolution.
Things soured when the British Empire Loyalists started streaming in after the revolution and — although American born and bred — started taking over governmental functions in the name of Britain. Nevertheless, the British authorities and Quebec Catholic Church made common cause for another century in mutual horror at European and American revolutions.
So, it’s deeper and more woven in our history than we can imagine. As long as the rivers run? Not quite, but my guess is as long as Canada lasts, no matter on which shaky head the crown rests.
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