Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, accedes to the throne: ‘WE, therefore, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this Realm….’

On this day in 1952, Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, acceded to the throne, becoming Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She is the longest-reigning monarch in British history, having been Queen for 68 years. Earlier today, soldiers from the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, in full dress uniform, rode from London’s Wellington Barracks past Buckingham Palace to nearby Green Park.

Seventy-one horses pulled six First World War-era 13-pounder field guns to the north of the park on Thursday, where the 41-gun salute was fired.

The bells of Westminster Abbey, the gothic church where the Queen was married and crowned, also rang out to mark Accession Day.

And at the Tower of London, the Honourable Artillery Company staged a 62-gun salute, with the extra 21 guns demonstrating the City of London’s loyalty to the 93-year-old monarch.

Queen Elizabeth II has ruled for 24,837 days, passing her Silver, Golden, Diamond and Sapphire Jubilees.

She became the United Kingdom and Commonwealth’s longest reigning monarch in September 2015, after overtaking Queen Victoria.

The Queen acceded to the throne on the death of her father King George VI.  Princess Elizabeth was in Kenya on an official royal tour of what was then known as the British Commonwealth, and which was also to take in Australia and New Zealand, when she learnt that she had become Sovereign. It was a tense time for colonial-indigenous relations in many British Commonwealth countries, including Kenya, and the royal tour was aimed at shoring up flagging support for the colonizers from the colonized. By 1952 Kikuyu fighters, along with some Embu and Meru recruits, were attacking political opponents and raiding white settler farms and destroying livestock. Mau Mau supporters took oaths, binding them to their cause. In October 1952, just eight months after the royal visit, the British declared a state of emergency and began moving army reinforcements into Kenya.

Now known simply as the Commonwealth, it is today a voluntary association of 54 independent and equal countries. It is home to 2.4 billion people, and includes both advanced economies and developing countries.  Maldives, a small island nation in South Asia, located in the Arabian Sea of the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka and India, and about 1,000 kilometres from the Asian continent, became the the 54th member when it officially re-joined the Commonwealth  last Saturday, having left it in 2016.

On the morning of Feb. 6, 1952, the King’s valet, James McDonald, alongside page Maurice Watts, discovered King George had died in his sleep.  A doctor was called, and after he confirmed the King’s death, “Hyde Park Corner,” the code words to be used in the event of the monarch’s death, were uttered, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was informed at once.

It was Philip who told Elizabeth of her father’s death. They were at Sagana fishing lodge 20 miles away from the Treetops Lodge Nyeri, when he told her. The news had first reached Nairobi at offices of a local newspaper, which informed the royal household. The source of the news from Sandringham came from journalist Granville Roberts, who worked on the East African Standard in Nairobi and was covering the royal visit. Roberts said that Reuters had run a flash simply saying: “The King is dead.”

Roberts immediately asked a receptionist to fetch Lt. Col. Martin Charteris, who was Elizabeth’s private secretary, to inform him of the news the Daily Mail reported in a Jan. 9, 2012 story (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083889/King-George-VI-True-story-day-Queen-Elizabeth-learned-fathers-death.html)

Asked if the message was correct, he simply replied: “Quite sure.”

Roberts then telephoned  Cmdr. Michael Parker, Philip’s private secretary to deliver the news, which was later confirmed by radio when Parker tuned to the BBC.

Parker awoke the Duke of Edinburgh from an afternoon nap to tell him of the death. He is said to have reacted like he had been hit by a thunderbolt. The official call was routed through a small country post office, as Elizabeth and Philip had spent the night in a jungle tree-top bungalow at Treetops Lodge Nyeri, a tree-house lodge on stilts located in the Aberdare National Park, where Elizabeth, “Clad in brown slacks and a yellow bush shirt … watched by moonlight the parade of African animals which included a rhinoceros,” United Press (UP), later to become United Press International (UPI), reported in a Feb. 6, 1952 story headlined “New ruler weeps at news of king’s death” (https://www.upi.com/Archives/1952/02/06/New-ruler-weeps-at-news-of-kings-death/5417153021042/).

The staff decided not to alarm Elizabeth until confirmation came from Buckingham Palace. It took nearly 30 minutes to get the radiotelephone call from London connection through and four hours in total before the news of her father’s death reached her.

The new Queen personally ordered a plane prepared at once for her departure for London to take her place at the head of the British Commonwealth and Empire. The plane flew them from Nanyuki, a nearby town, to Entebbe where another plane was waiting.

Meanwhile, the ensign aboard the ship Gothic, which was to leave the following day with the royal couple for Australia via Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, was lowered to half mast, as were all flags throughout Kenya. They were delayed by several hours by a thunderstorm in Entebbe but they left at around midnight.

During the flight, another problem arose in that the Queen’s mourning outfit had already gone ahead and she only had a floral dress to wear.

They decided to land at El Adem, Libya in North Africa to avoid British-occupied Egypt in the wake of the “Cairo Fire” (حريق القاهرة‎), also known as Black Saturday, on Jan. 26, 1952, marked by the burning and looting of some 750 buildings retail shops, cafes, cinemas, hotels, restaurants, theatres, nightclubs, and the city’s opera house in downtown Cairo.

A message was sent ahead and a second black outfit was taken to London airport.

Upon the flight’s arrival, the dress was taken aboard after it stopped in the remote area of the airport.

The Queen changed quickly before emerging, meeting a line-up including her uncle the Duke of Gloucester and Churchill.

Maj. Eric Sherbrooke Walker built the Treetops Lodge Nyeri in 1932 on a “mugumo” (fig) tree for his wife Lady Bettie.

A hotelier and founder also of the Outspan Hotel in Kenya, Walker was a decorated military officer who had run a bootlegging business, smuggling liquor into America during the Prohibition era, while his fiancée Lady Bettie worked as social secretary in the British Embassy in Washington. When Walker shot and wounded a corrupt state trooper who had tried to steal his cache of whiskey, the couple fled to Canada. Walker later wrote The Confessions of a Rum-Runner under the pseudonym of “James Barbican” about his life during this period.

Initially, only open on Wednesday nights to overnight guests as a night-viewing platform, it was purposely built beside a waterhole where animals would come for refreshment and natural salt lick. Treetops opened to the public Nov. 6, 1932 with two beds selling at ₤10 per person. The Treetops Lodge had grown to a three-bedroom, eight-bed lodge when Princess Elizabeth climbed into it almost 20 years later on Feb. 5, 1952 and descended the next day as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

“For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a princess and after having what she described as her most thrilling experience she climbed down from the tree next day a queen,” noted Jim Corbett, the famed British hunter, tracker, naturalist, and author, who hunted a number of man-eating tigers and leopards in India, but who had retired to Kenya in 1947, wrote famously in the hotel’s visitors’ register.

Elizabeth, now Queen of Kenya and of Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, as her title was styled in Kenya, immediately flew home. Aged 25, many were initially skeptical about her competency, including Churchill.

Elizabeth’s succession to the throne was proclaimed at an Accession Council. This took place in St James’s Palace and was attended by members of the Privy Council, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London.

The Accession Council met twice at St. James’s Palace: first at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 6, before the new Queen had returned from Kenya, to make their proclamation declaring the accession of the new sovereign, as the late king’s successor in accordance with the line of succession to the British throne.

The Accession Council’s proclamation was published Feb. 6,1952 in a supplement to that day’s London Gazette.

“Upon the intimation that our late Most Gracious Sovereign King George the Sixth had died in his sleep at Sandringham in the early hours of this morning the Lords of the Privy Council assembled this day at St. James’s Palace, and gave orders for proclaiming Her present Majesty.
“WHEREAS it has pleased Almighty God to call to His Mercy our late Sovereign Lord George VI

“— King George the Sixth of Blessed and Glorious memory, by whose Decease the Crown is solely and rightfully come to the High and Mighty Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary:

“WE, therefore, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this Realm, being here assisted with these His late Majesty’s Privy Council, with representatives of other Members of the Commonwealth, with other Principal Gentlemen of Quality, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London, do now hereby with one voice and Consent of Tongue and Heart publish and proclaim that the High and Mighty Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary is now, by the death of our late Sovereign of happy memory, become Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of all Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, to whom Her lieges do acknowledge all Faith and constant Obedience with hearty and humble Affection, beseeching God by whom Kings and Queens do reign, to bless the Royal Princess Elizabeth the Second with long and happy Years to reign over us.

“Given at St. James’s Palace this Sixth Day of February in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifty-two

“Brief pause for trumpets. And then shouts

“GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.”

The second meeting of the Accession Council began at 10 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, when the new Queen was personally present, to receive her oath for the security of the Church of Scotland and her own personal declaration, pledging that she would always work to uphold constitutional government and to advance the happiness and prosperity of her peoples all the world over.

“By the sudden death of my dear father I am called to assume the duties and responsibilities of sovereignty,” said the Queen. “My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than I shall always work, as my father did throughout his reign, to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples.”

Her declaration for securing the Protestant succession, as required by the 1689 Bill of Rights and the Accession Declaration Act 1910, was made later, at her first State Opening of Parliament on Nov. 4, 1952.

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Happy Canada Day from the True North: Land of Back Bacon, Pickerel, the Maple Leaf, Beaver, Moose and Loon, eh

Here’s some food for thought from Ipsos Reid’s annual Canada Day survey conducted between June 12 and June 15 on behalf of Historica Canada, formerly known as the Historica-Dominion Institute, as you get ready to hoist the cold libation of your choice tomorrow to perhaps toast Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, and mark Canada’s 148th birthday.

Historica Canada is a national charitable organization that was launched in September 2009 as the Historica-Dominion Institute, through the amalgamation of two existing organizations: The Historica Foundation of Canada and the Dominion Institute. The Historica Foundation of Canada was launched in October 1999, while the Dominion Institute was formed in 1997 by a group of young professionals, concerned about the erosion of a common memory and civic identity in Canada.

While Ipsos Reid assures us their sample of 1,005 Canadians from Ipsos’ panel interviewed online was weighted to balance demographics “to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe,” I wonder? Does it really matter that much? It’s the all-too-short summer barbecue season in Canada, time to have some fun, without worrying too much about how the sample was constructed. It’s a Canada Day poll after all, not say a … provincial election seats results prediction poll!

Don’t get me wrong. I have worked in public opinion research on-and-off, sometimes between journalism gigs, since 1980, including working as a supervisor for Cambridge Survey Research where I supervised telephone call center employees for Democratic National Committee (DNC) pollster Pat Caddell’s firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the 1980 Carter-Reagan presidential election campaign. Earlier the same year, I worked as a field interviewer in Peterborough, Ontario for Opinion Place/Marketing Insights, a Winnipeg company, doing a 1980 Quebec Referendum survey for the Center for Canadian Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. So when Ipsos Reid says the precision of their Canada Day poll is accurate to a confidence or credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadian adults been polled with the margin of expected sampling, coverage, measurement and perhaps other errors, as well as a confidence or credibility interval that is wider among subsets of the population, I’m suitably impressed.

And then I go back to the barbecue. Or perhaps my mother’s black cast-iron skillet if it is breakfast time.  Ipsos Reid  says 35 per cent of Canadians named back bacon as Canada’s national food, beating out poutine, named by only 30 per cent, for the top spot this year. Salmon, whether Atlantic or Pacific, trailed at a distant third (personally, I’d have opted for Paint Lake pickerel, a regional delicacy of Northern Manitoba), named by 17 per cent, followed by beavertails at eight per cent; tourtière at six per cent and doughnuts (which is how we’ll spell it for Canada Day) at four per cent.

Other fascinating tidbits include such illuminating facts as only 12 per cent of us have had the opportunity to go out dog-sledding.

When it comes to Canadian symbols, the beaver ranks up with the maple leaf, and 64 per cent of Canadians have seen a beaver in the wild, followed by moose at 60 per cent, edging out loons at 59 per cent and a bear in the wild at 55 per cent. Meanwhile 16 per cent of Canadians say they  have never seen any of these animals,  Ipsos Reid reports. If you live in Toronto or Vancouver, well, take your dog-sledding stats for guidance. Could happen, I suppose, but back bacon is a better bet. Trust me.

Respondents were asked which musician they are proudest to call Canadian. Nearly four in 10  (38 per cent) chose Celine Dion from a list which also included Kingston’s The Tragically Hip (picked by 14 per cent), Nickelback (11 per cent), Blue Rodeo (nine per cent), Drake (six per cent), Justin Bieber (two per cent), or some other musician or group (20 per cent). Given that Neil Young, The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, April Wine, the Stampeders, A Foot in Coldwater and Loverboy, just to name half a dozen or so others, are apparently absent from the top of the list, I’ve concluded this must be the result of the confidence or credibility interval that I mentioned earlier. Or, perhaps more likely even, the fact my tastes in Canadian music apparently haven’t quite arrived in the 21st century yet. A possibility not to be discounted, to be sure.

Five years ago, the Historica-Dominion Institute, in partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs and with the support of the Aurea Foundation, conducted an online survey, “Canada and the World in 2010,” which was also conducted for it by pollster Ipsos Reid and had more than 18,000 respondents in 24 countries.

The survey found, among many other things, Canadians sometimes overestimate their own influence in world affairs:

While two in three Canadians (67 per cent) agreed in 2010 that Canada had an influence on the world stage, only 55 per cent of global respondents agreed. Those polled in Brazil and India were most likely (both 74 per cent) to agree that Canada had influence in world affairs, while only one third of Japanese and Swedes agreed, making them least likely of the 24 countries polled to believe that Canada is influential on the world stage.

For Americans, Independence Day Saturday on July 4 marks the defeat of the British Redcoats in the War of Independence in 1783, although some Southerners still mourn it as the date in 1863 when Vicksburg, Mississippi fell to Union troops in the War Between the States or Civil War.

Canada being Canada and Canadians being Canadians, we quintessentially mark July 1 with what might appear to outsiders to be a rather odd mix of reticence, pride and ambivalence. Me? I like to recall that it was on Canada Day 2007 I arrived to live in Manitoba!

Sometimes we forget just how remarkable an achievement Canada was in 1867. In the spring of 1864, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were contemplating the possibility of Maritime Union. But nothing concrete happened until the Province of Canada, springing from the legislative union of Canada East and Canada West, heard of the proposed conference and members of the combined legislature requested permission to attend the meeting of the Maritime colonies, in order to raise the larger subject of British North American union.

Delegates from away arrived by steamer in Prince Edward Island and shared the spotlight with the first circus to visit the island in more than 20 years. No kidding. How absolutely Canadian can you get?

The historic Charlottetown Conference took place from Sept. 1 to 9, 1864. My ancestral Acadian roots are on the saltwater Tantramar marshes of Amherst, Nova Scotia, in Cumberland County on the Isthmus of Chignecto at the head of the Bay of Fundy and Missiguash River, bordering New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and connecting the Nova Scotia peninsula with those who come from away elsewhere in North America. From Amherst came four of the 36 Fathers of Confederation, more than any other city or town in Canada:  Robert Barry Dickey, Edward Barron Chandler, Jonathan McCully, and Sir Charles Tupper, a Conservative who went onto serve as Canada’s sixth prime minister briefly in 1896.  While he was born in Amherst, Chandler was best known as a New Brunswick legislator.

Tupper was also a medical doctor and founded Pugsley’s Pharmacy, dispensing chemists, at 63 Victoria Street East in downtown Amherst in 1843, the same year he became a doctor. Tupper was president of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia in 1863, and was the first president of the Canadian Medical Association from 1867 to 1870. Pugsley’s operated at the same location in the same historic Tupper Block building, as the oldest business in town and one of the oldest pharmacies in Canada, for 169 years until May 2012.

While there are differing historical opinions as to who should be considered a Father of Confederation, traditionally they have been defined as the 36 men who attended one or more of the three conferences held at Charlottetown; Québec City from Oct. 10 to 27, 1864; and London, England from Dec. 4, 1866 to Feb. 11, 1867 to discuss the union of British North America, preceding Confederation on July 1, 1867. Negotiators settled on the name “Dominion of Canada,” proposed by the head of the New Brunswick delegation, Samuel Leonard Tilley.  The word dominion was taken from the King James Bible: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Psalm 72:8). Tilley, who had a background in pharmacy, became the minister of customs in Sir John A. Macdonald’s first cabinet in 1867.

As a Canadian, it also remains an uncommon privilege for me to have to sat in the public gallery in the balcony of historic Province House in Charlottetown, designed and built by local architect Isaac Smith and completed in 1847, to accommodate the legislative assembly of Prince Edward Island. To this day, the assembly has only 27 seats for the members from the ridings of Souris-Elmira through to Tignish-Palmer Road.

The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879, under the name Dominion Day. There is no record of organized ceremonies after the first anniversary, except for the 50th anniversary of Confederation in 1917, at which time the new Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, under construction, was dedicated as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation and to the valour of Canadians fighting in the First World War in Europe.

The next celebration was held in 1927 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation.

Since 1958, the federal government has arranged for an annual observance of Canada’s national day on July 1.

Well done, Sir John A.

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