The Queen visited Canada more than any other country during her long reign. It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest the Queen held a special place in her heart for Canada.
As an ardent world traveller, she visited this country more than any other during her reign, and she was in the habit of referring to it as home.
On Oct. 8, 1951, Princess Elizabeth arrived at Montréal–Dorval International Airport, where she was met by 15,000 people on the tarmac. “It was an incredible feat of stamina,” says MacKenzie, a history instructor at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S. The next day, she officially opened a new session of Parliament by reading the speech from the throne in the Senate chamber, with Prince Philip at her side.
“If I have helped you feel proud of being Canadian, I shall feel well satisfied, because I believe with all conviction that this country can look to a glorious future,” she said.“This is the first time since she became Queen that everyone in Canada had the opportunity to see her,” says MacKenzie. “And it’s the last time that we see one of these huge undertakings.”
Among them was a “tiny grey-haired woman in black, surrounded by 12 of her 18 surviving children,” The Canadian Press reported at the time. That brief visit was marked by tight security as organizers wanted to avoid what happened in 1964 when the Queen’s visit to Quebec City was marred by waves of police using truncheons to round up separatist protesters who were shouting slogans and singing irreverent songs.
“She wasn’t signing a document and giving us our freedom,” says MacKenzie. “This was the Queen of Canada signing an act that had been passed in her name in the Canadian Parliament .... It was not a declaration of independence.”On the Queen’s final visit to Canada, she told a crowd in Halifax exactly how she felt about this vast part of her realm.
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