(Queen Elizabeth II is shown some Newfoundland dogs with Premier of Newfoundland Brian Tobin in Bonavista, Nfld., on June 24, 1997. Photo By Carlo Allegri /AFP PHOTO)
(Christina Blizzard - Toronotosun.com)
"Queen Elizabeth II had a long love affair with Canada. And we loved her back.
She visited this country 22 times — more than any other in the world.
Her first visit was as a princess in 1951, shortly before the death of her father, George VI.
I was lucky enough to cover the last few tours she made to this country. One of them was to greet the ship, The Matthew, a replica of John Cabot’s ship. Five hundred years after Cabot discovered Newfoundland, the Queen was on hand in Bonavista, in 1997 to greet a replica of that ship as it sailed in from England.
It was minus four degrees, that June day when The Matthew arrived. There was fog offshore and a cold, East Coast drizzle that occasionally turned to flurries. The wind cut through like a knife to the bone. All the same, huge crowds turned out in the tiny fishing village, clogging roads and causing good-natured mayhem as they greeted the royal couple.
Swaddled in blankets and a sporting a weatherproof coat, the Queen sat through an hour-long ceremony of sea shanties and speeches with absolute stoicism.
Back in St. John’s the next day, she shed the dowdy rain gear to dazzle at a gala with Prime Minister Jean Chretien, before heading off to Labrador. It was a whirlwind schedule, with countless changes in weather and clothing. Yet she and her husband, Prince Philip, spent hours shaking hands and greeting people.
n 2010, she toured Nova Scotia, where she spent an afternoon inspecting warships from around the world in Halifax harbour in an international ceremony. There were frigates and destroyers from many countries and their crews met the Queen with loud cheers and exuberant hat-twirling salutes.
I was on one of the boats following the royal couple as mariners from around the world saluted them. It was there I met the Queen’s formidable dresser, Angela Kelly, whose formal title is special adviser to Her Majesty (Queen’s Wardrobe).
Kelly is a no-nonsense type who makes no secret of her humble beginnings in a modest family in Liverpool. She and the Queen became fast friends over the years, with the Queen reportedly admiring Kelly’s forthright nature. Kelly is credited with changing her boss’s style, putting her in bolder colours and more stylish outfits.
After Halifax, the royal couple flew off to Ottawa for Canada Day celebrations then on to Toronto and Waterloo to tour the headquarters of Research in Motion, makers of the then-state-of-the-art BlackBerry. She also toured Toronto’s Pinewood Studios.
At the RIM offices, she was presented with a new BlackBerry and I recall some young reporters on the media bus on the way home questioning whether the elderly Queen would know how to use it.
In fact, she was an early adopter of the new technology. It wasn’t her first BlackBerry. Back in the heyday of the brand, Buckingham Palace liked the security features on the revolutionary Canadian-made phone. She’d had several before being handed the new one. And she was perfectly at home around technology.
She trained as a mechanic during the war with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), so was not exactly a shrinking violet when it came to rolling up her sleeves to get things to work. She drove herself in her Range Rover until her final days.
She also spoke good French — as did her father, George VI. His speech impediment was the subject of the 2010 movie The King’s Speech. Oddly, while he had stuttered in English, he spoke French perfectly. It was that proficiency that made him popular in Quebec. Quebecers said he was more their king than the Anglos’ because of his perfect French.
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