If you happen to have turned on the news this past week you might have been surprised to see that only one event seems to have happened across the entire globe. The Queen has left the building. In this week's Camino a Ítaca I look at the succession from the perspective of a Canadian who has emmigrated to another country. You can click over and see the original version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English below. (PDF en castellano abajo)
Last week my fellow
Canadians woke up to drastic change. While they dreamed of grizzly bears, ice
hockey, extended personal space and maple syrup, something half a world away took
place that changed the way their lives were run. Without consultation,
discussion or even politely being asked, they woke up to a new head of state.
Like waking up to the worst hangover Las Vegas, Ibiza or Magaluf can offer, the
people north of the 49th parallel woke up to King Charles III.
After 70 years on the throne
of the United Kingdom, his mother, Queen Elizabeth II had sadly passed away and
after a lifetime of waiting in the wings, Charles the Anxious finally had to go
to work.
What does the passing of a
foreign monarch have to do with a G7 member state you might ask? Why would the
death of a Queen across the Atlantic Ocean have anything to do with Canada?
Well, it’s because Elizabeth
was their head of state until she passed and when she did, her heir automatically
became the King of Canada. True, it’s not only Canada, but also Australia, New
Zealand, Jamaica, Belize and more South Pacific islands than you knew existed.
Many have the idea that this
freakish incident of history has something to do with the vaunted Commonwealth,
but in fact it doesn’t. Independent countries like India, Pakistan, Nigeria and
Malta are also member states of the Commonwealth, but these nations sagaciously
choose to elect their heads of state from amongst their own citizens. Yes,
citizens, not subjects.
Elizabeth was loved in
Canada and remembered for her fortitude during the Second World War. A war in
which many Canadians died. My own 76-year-old mother can’t even recall life
without her being Queen. Once, when the Queen was going to visit my province of
Alberta, an extravagant bathroom was built in the middle of the wilderness for
her in the Canadian Rockies in the event she should be indisposed.
Charles is another case.
He has never been forgiven
for his treatment of Diana, someone who Canadians, overwhelmingly, did like.
His callous behaviour after her death only solidified the image of someone
completely out of touch. An image he only went on to worsen by flying around
the world in private jets lecturing on the need to be sustainable or telling
people they didn’t look ‘British’ because they were brown. The memes of him struggling with pens have only made things worse. Now, he’s the
‘defender of the faith’. Notice the exclusiveness of the definite
article.
But all this absurdity
really has nothing to do with people or personalities. A King can be better or
worse. They can be closet racists, lascivious buffoons, journalist assassins, or
well-prepared Canadian-educated technocrats but in the end they are still sovereigns.
Unelected heads of state that normally can only be removed by serious civil
unrest or worse yet, all-out rebellion.
Countries like Australia,
Jamaica, Belize and Antigua and Barbuda had started consultations on constitutional reform and had
been planning to truly become independent well before the Queen’s passing and now
this will only speed up.
Hangovers can be
worthwhile if you had your fun. But if it means seeing Charles’ mug every time you look at your currency, time to
move on.
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