queen elizabeth royal visits to canada

The Queen in Canada: 22 visits during her reign

Elizabeth made nearly 2 dozen official visits to canada since 1952.

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The Queen, who died Thursday at her Balmoral estate  in Scotland, made 22 official visits to Canada after ascending to the throne in 1952. Her first time here as Queen was in 1957, the last in 2010. During those years, she visited every province and territory. 

Here are some highlights from those visits.

1957: First visit, first live TV address

Prince Philip accompanied Elizabeth on her first official visit as Queen to Canada. The couple had visited previously in 1951 while Elizabeth was a princess.

They spent four days in Ottawa and the Queen became the first reigning sovereign to open the Canadian Parliament. 

WATCH | Queen Elizabeth opens Parliament in Ottawa: 

The Queen opens Canada's Parliament

She delivered the throne speech for the 23rd Parliament on Oct. 14. 

WATCH | The full speech from the throne: 

Queen Elizabeth: 1957 Opening of Parliament

She also made a televised address, the first one she had done live, during which she praised Canada's population growth and strong currency.

The address was one of the first examples of the monarchy adapting new technologies during her reign. As communications evolved, attention continued to focus on the Queen's first forays on new platforms such as Twitter or Instagram. 

1964: An angry reception in Quebec

The Queen and Prince Philip visited Charlottetown, Quebec City and Ottawa. 

She was invited by the prime minister to attend the centennial of two 1864 pre-Confederation conferences in Charlottetown and Quebec City. Elizabeth was warmly welcomed to Charlottetown, but when she got to Quebec City, she was greeted by anti-monarchist and separatist protesters. 

WATCH | Protesters greet Queen Elizabeth: 

Protests greet the Queen in Quebec

Quebec's relationship with the monarchy wasn't always strained. When the Queen's father, King George VI, and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, visited in 1939, they received a warm welcome, as Canadians rallied in support of the war effort.

But the emergence of Quebec nationalism and the Quiet Revolution led to the separatist movement, which was inherently republican. 

WATCH | CBC journalists Knowlton Nash and William Depoe talk about the incident on the news that night: 

Queen's visit to Quebec City marred by violence

It was a very different story upon her departure from Ottawa, though, as nearly 1,500 well-wishers turned out to see her off (Philip had left a few hours earlier).

WATCH | Queen Elizabeth leaves Canada after visiting in 1964:

Queen departs after 1964 visit to Canada

1967: the centennial and a huge cake.

The year 1967 was significant for Canada. The country was marking its centennial and the Queen was there for celebrations on Parliament Hill. 

She delivered a speech that day, describing Canada as "a nation that has grown and prospered in an atmosphere of freedom where differences are respected and where the rights of individual men and women to work out their own salvations have never been long denied."  

You can watch here full speech from that day here . 

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After their time in Ottawa, the Queen and Prince Philip travelled to Montreal, arriving there on July 3 to visit Expo 67.

There was some concern about how the royal couple would be received in Quebec, given the protests just a few years earlier. But on this visit, they got a warm reception. 

They visited the British and Canadian pavilions and toured the full site on the Expo minirail.  

1976: The whole family cheers on Anne

If the Montreal Olympics weren't reason enough for the Queen to visit Canada in 1976, she and her family, who accompanied her on the trip, had the added bonus of seeing their daughter and sister Anne competing on the British equestrian team.

The visit was noteworthy because it was the only time the Queen's entire immediate family was in the country at the same time. Prince Philip and Anne's brothers Charles, Andrew and Edward were also on hand to cheer Anne on.

WATCH | Queen Elizabeth opens the Olympics in Montreal:

The Queen opens the 1976 Olympics

The Queen also visited New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on this trip. 

1982: The Constitution and a mystery giggle

The Queen returned to Canada in 1982 for the proclamation of the Constitution. An estimated 32,000 people came out in the rain in Ottawa on April 17, 1982 for the ceremony on Parliament Hill. 

And there was a memorable moment during the ceremony that was only reported years later. While signing the document after the Queen, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau broke the tip of the pen. When the justice minister, Jean Chrétien, went to sign it, he couldn't, and uttered "merde," causing the Queen to laugh. He was forced to reach for a second pen. 

WATCH | The signing ceremony for the proclamation of the Constitution (the moment when the Queen laughs begins at about the 1:56 mark): 

The Queen proclaims the Constitution Act

Following the signing, the Queen delivered a speech, stating, "Today I have proclaimed this new Constitution, one that is truly Canadian at last. There could be no better moment for me as Queen of Canada to declare again my unbounded confidence in the future of this wonderful country."

WATCH | The Queen's full speech: 

The Queen's speech after proclaiming the Constitution Act

2002: golden jubilee with a twist of controversy.

Her 2002 visit to Canada was part of a year of celebration for the Queen as she marked 50 years as monarch.

Elizabeth came to Canada as part of her Golden Jubilee tour — which also took her to New Zealand, Australia and Jamaica — and thanked Canadians for their "loyalty, encouragement and support" during her reign.

But there was a bit of controversy courtesy of Canada's deputy prime minister, who was assigned to be her escort in Ottawa during the visit.

John Manley had said that he hoped to see the end of the monarchy in Canada after Elizabeth's reign.

WATCH | The Queen presents a horse to the RCMP following a performance of the Musical Ride:

The Queen gives the RCMP a horse

2010: the final visit to a place like 'home'.

The Queen's final visit to Canada was in 2010. She visited five cities and spent Canada Day in Ottawa with about 100,000 others on Parliament Hill.

"This nation has dedicated itself to being a caring home for its own, a sanctuary for others and an example to the world," she said during the visit.

Elizabeth visited Canada more times as Queen than any other Commonwealth country. And she referred to Canada as "home" as she arrived in Halifax — a term she used throughout her reign when speaking of this country. 

WATCH | The Queen's last speech on Canada Day from Parliament Hill:

The Queen on Canada Day

WATCH | A collection of highlights from the Queen's visits to Canada from 1957 to 2010:

The Queen in Canada 1957-1976

The Queen in Canada 1977-2010

• Queen Elizabeth, Canada's head of state, dead at 96
• With Queen Elizabeth's death, Canada prepares for an official mourning period

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'Home away from home': A look back through Queen Elizabeth II's official visits to Canada

Of all the countries in the Commonwealth, Canada was the late Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite destination, judging by how many times she graced our shores.

Over the course of her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II officially visited Canada more than 20 times, ranging from sweeping royal tours to visits for anniversaries and special events.

Canada’s relationship with the monarch has always been significant. The Queen was head of state for 16 countries in the Commonwealth, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica, among others, but of these 16 countries, the Queen has visited Canada the most.

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“My mother once said that this country felt like a home away from home for the Queen of Canada,” the Queen said during her last visit to Canada, in 2010.

“I’m delighted to report that it still does, and I’m delighted to be back amongst you all.”

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, she is the “most travelled monarch in history.”

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The first time that the Queen set foot on Canadian soil was when she was only 25 years old and still a princess — in 1951, she took her ailing father’s place to visit Canada with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh.

Prince Philip, who died on April 9, 2021, was particularly fond of Canada, and travelled to the country 46 times in total, including his many visits by the Queen’s side.

Two years after her first visit, in 1953, she was crowned Queen. She made a brief appearance in Gander, N.L. that year during a stopover on the way to tour other parts of the Commonwealth, but wouldn’t return for an official visit of Canada until 1957.

John Diefenbaker, the prime minister at the time, was eager to strengthen ties to Britain and cement the Queen’s role in Canada, and even had the Queen preside over a cabinet meeting during her brief visit.

During that trip, the Queen also opened Canada’s new Parliament, an event that she was proud to mention in her Christmas speech later that year, the very first televised Christmas speech from a British royal ever.

“Last October, I opened the new Canadian Parliament,” she said in the speech. “This was the first time that any sovereign had done so in Ottawa. Once again, I was overwhelmed by the loyalty and enthusiasm of my Canadian people.”

But her longest trip to Canada — and arguably the most important — occurred in 1959, when she toured all of the provinces, as well as both current territories, with Prince Philip for 45 days. This is still the longest tour any reigning monarch has made of Canada, and although the Queen visited Canada many times after, she never did so on this scale again.

Buckingham Palace instructed the visit to be referred to as a “royal tour” to emphasize the importance, and to position the Queen as comfortable in her role as Queen of Canada.

Although the Queen was greeted with crowds wherever she went, travelled more than 24,000 kilometres on this trip, shook nearly 5,000 hands and attended sixty-one formal functions, according to the book “Canada and the End of Empire,” the tour was not without controversy. Indigenous people were present at many events on her tour, often meeting with the Queen to perform dances or demonstrate cultural knowledge — but any issues such as treaties or land rights were not permitted to be brought up.

In the years to come, the Queen would make around 20 more official visits to Canada. Including brief stopovers, the Queen has been in Canada more than 30 times.

Most trips have involved ceremonial duties, tours of the country or charity work, but she has also come to Canada to act in an official capacity, such as when she opened Parliament in 1957, and when she delivered a Speech from the Throne again in 1977.

The speech to outline the federal government’s plans for the coming session of Parliament is usually read by the Governor General as the Queen’s representative. The Queen’s second time reading the speech herself in 1977 was part of her Silver Jubilee tour, the 25th anniversary of her ascending to the throne of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

Another notable visit was when the Queen came to Canada in 1982 to sign the landmark Proclamation of the Constitution Act, the passing of which gave Canada full independence.

During her visits, the Queen often honoured Canada through her wardrobe. In 1957, on her first trip to Canada post-coronation, she wore a striking cream gown covered in sparkling green maple leaves to the state banquet at Rideau Hall, dubbed the “Maple Leaf of Canada Dress.”

During her tour of Canada in 1959, she wore a blue and pink evening gown designed by Sir Hardy Amies to a dinner at the Government House in Nova Scotia, which was embroidered with blooms representing mayflowers, the provincial flower of Nova Scotia.

In her later years, she was frequently seen wearing an iconic diamond brooch in the shape of a maple leaf, called the “Canadian Maple Leaf Royal Brooch.” It had been a favourite of her mother, and after it was passed down to the Queen, she wore it to Canada numerous times, as well as loaning it to family members such as Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, when they visited Canada.

Over the years, the Queen developed strong relationships with Canada’s prime ministers, having met with many of them in person.

The Queen appointed Jean Chretien, Canada’s 20th Prime Minister to the Order of Merit in 2009, a distinction that is restricted to only 24 living people within the Commonwealth. It is given to “persons who have rendered exceptionally meritorious service to the Crown, in armed services or towards the advancement of arts, literature and science.”

Two other Canadian Prime Ministers had received the award before: William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1947, before the Queen took the throne, and Lester B. Pearson in 1971.

The very last time the Queen visited Canada was in 2010, for a nine day visit through five different cities, a trip that saw her celebrating Canada Day in Ottawa on Parliament Hill. Continuing her tradition of honouring Canada through her garments, she even had a favourite dress adjusted to add Canadian maple leaves in Swarovski crystals down the right shoulder and sleeve to wear to a state dinner at the Royal York Hotel.

“My pride in this country remains undimmed.” the Queen said the first day of the trip, speaking to a crowd in Halifax.

The Queen never publicly declared which city or region of Canada was her favourite to visit, but outside of her numerous trips to Ottawa, she visited Victoria, B.C., five times, and visited Winnipeg, Vancouver, Regina and Toronto four times as well, not counting her 1959 tour of the entire country or brief stopovers.

Despite a lack of consensus in Canada over whether we should maintain our ties to the monarchy, a debate that has simmered for decades, the Queen’s visits always brought out numerous Canadians eager to catch a glimpse of the monarch.

And her regard for Canada was evident across her reign, from start to end.

“Throughout the years, particularly since your Centennial year, I have watched Canada develop into a remarkable nation,” the Queen said in 2017, on the 150th anniversary of Confederation. “You have earned a reputation as a welcoming, respectful and compassionate country.

"On this eve of national celebrations, my family and I are with you in spirit.”

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Queen Elizabeth's Royal Visits to Canada

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Queen Elizabeth, Canada's head of state , always draws crowds when she visits Canada. Since her accession to the Throne in 1952, Queen Elizabeth has made 22 official Royal visits to Canada, usually accompanied by her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh , and sometimes by her children Prince Charles , Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. Queen Elizabeth has visited every province and territory in Canada.

2010 Royal Visit

Date: June 28 to July 6, 2010 Accompanied by Prince Philip The 2010 Royal Visit included celebrations in Halifax, Nova Scotia to mark the centennial of the founding of the Royal Canadian Navy, Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and a dedication of the cornerstone for the Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

2005 Royal Visit

Date: May 17 to 25, 2005 Accompanied by Prince Philip Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip attended events in Saskatchewan and Alberta to celebrate the centennial of the entry of Saskatchewan and Alberta into Confederation.

2002 Royal Visit

Date: October 4 to 15, 2002 Accompanied by Prince Philip The 2002 Royal Visit to Canada was in celebration of the Queen's Golden Jubilee. The Royal couple visited Iqaluit, Nunavut; Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Toronto, Oakville, Hamilton and Ottawa, Ontario; Fredericton, Sussex, and Moncton, New Brunswick.

1997 Royal Visit

Date: June 23 to July 2, 1997 Accompanied by Prince Philip The 1997 Royal Visit marked the 500th anniversary of John Cabot's arrival in what is now Canada. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited St. John's and Bonavista, Newfoundland; NorthWest River, Shetshatshiu, Happy Valley and Goose Bay, Labrador, They also visited London, Ontario and viewed the floods in Manitoba.

1994 Royal Visit

Date: August 13 to 22, 1994 Accompanied by Prince Philip Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip toured Halifax, Sydney, the Fortress of Louisbourg, and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia; attended the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, British Columbia; and visited Yellowknife , Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit (then part of the Northwest Territories).

1992 Royal Visit

Date: June 30 to July 2, 1992 Queen Elizabeth visited Ottawa, Canada's capital, marking the 125th anniversary of Canadian Confederation and the 40th anniversary of her accession to the Throne.

1990 Royal Visit

Date: June 27 to July 1, 1990 Queen Elizabeth visited Calgary and Red Deer, Alberta, and then joined the celebrations for Canada Day in Ottawa, Canada's capital.

1987 Royal Visit

Date: October 9 to 24, 1987 Accompanied by Prince Philip On the 1987 Royal Visit, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip toured Vancouver, Victoria and Esquimalt, British Columbia; Regina, Saskatoon, Yorkton, Canora, Veregin, Kamsack and Kindersley, Saskatchewan; and Sillery, Cap Tourmente, Rivière-du-Loup and La Pocatière, Quebec.

1984 Royal Visit

Date: September 24 to October 7, 1984 Accompanied by Prince Philip for all parts of the visit except Manitoba Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip toured New Brunswick and Ontario to participate in events marking the bicentennials of those two provinces. Queen Elizabeth also visited Manitoba.

1983 Royal Visit

Date: March 8 to 11, 1983 Accompanied by Prince Philip At the end of a tour of the U.S. West Coast, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited Victoria, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Vernon, Kamloops and New Westminster, British Columbia.

1982 Royal Visit

Date: April 15 to 19, 1982 Accompanied by Prince Philip This Royal Visit was to Ottawa, Canada's capital, for the Proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982.

1978 Royal Visit

Date: July 26 to August 6, 1978 Accompanied by Prince Philip, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward Toured Newfoundland, Saskatchewan and Alberta, attending the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Alberta.

1977 Royal Visit

Date: October 14 to 19, 1977 Accompanied by Prince Philip This Royal Visit was to Ottawa, Canada's capital, in celebration of the Queen's Silver Jubilee Year.

1976 Royal Visit

Date: June 28 to July 6, 1976 Accompanied by Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward The Royal family visited Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and then Montreal, Quebec for the 1976 Olympics. Princess Anne was a member of the British equestrian team competing in the Olympics in Montreal.

1973 Royal Visit (2)

Date: July 31 to August 4, 1973 Accompanied by Prince Philip Queen Elizabeth was in Ottawa, Canada's capital, for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Prince Philip had his own program of events.

1973 Royal Visit (1)

Date: June 25 to July 5, 1973 Accompanied by Prince Philip Queen Elizabeth's first visit to Canada in 1973 included an extended tour of Ontario, including events to mark the 300th anniversary of Kingston. The Royal couple spent time in Prince Edward Island marking the centennial of PEI's entry into Canadian Confederation, and they went on to Regina, Saskatchewan, and Calgary, Alberta to participate in events marking the RCMP centennial.

1971 Royal Visit

Date: May 3 to May 12, 1971 Accompanied by Princess Anne Queen Elizabeth and Princess Anne marked the centennial of British Columbia's entry into Canadian Confederation by visiting Victoria, Vancouver, Tofino, Kelowna, Vernon, Penticton, William Lake and Comox, B.C.

1970 Royal Visit

Date: July 5 to 15, 1970 Accompanied by Prince Charles and Princess Anne The 1970 Royal Visit to Canada included a tour of Manitoba to celebrate the centennial of Manitoba's entry into Canadian Confederation. The Royal Family also visited the Northwest Territories to mark its centennial.

1967 Royal Visit

Date: June 29 to July 5, 1967 Accompanied by Prince Philip Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were in Ottawa, Canada's capital, to celebrate Canada's centennial. They also went to Montreal, Quebec to attend Expo '67.

1964 Royal Visit

Date: October 5 to 13, 1964 Accompanied by Prince Philip Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip Visited Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Quebec City, Quebec and Ottawa, Ontario to attend the commemoration of the three major conferences that led up to Canadian Confederation in 1867.

1959 Royal Visit

Date: June 18 to August 1, 1959 Accompanied by Prince Philip This was Queen Elizabeth's first major tour of Canada. She officially opened the St. Lawrence Seaway and visited all Canadian provinces and territories over the span of six weeks.

1957 Royal Visit

Date: October 12 to 16, 1957 Accompanied by Prince Philip On her first official visit to Canada as Queen, Queen Elizabeth spent four days in Ottawa, Canada's capital, and officially opened the first session of the 23rd Parliament of Canada.

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In visits to Canada, Queen Elizabeth left her mark as British history’s most travelled monarch

Expo 67 and constitutional patriation in 1982 were just some of the highlights of the Queen’s Canadian travels over the decades

This article was published more than 1 year ago. Some information may no longer be current.

The Queen inspects guards at the Parliament Hill on Canada Day, 2010, part of her last visit to Canada. John Stillwell/Getty Images

From coast to coast to coast, the Queen came to know Canada well during her 70 years as the country’s head of state.

The Queen was the most travelled monarch in British history, visiting Canada in her official capacity 22 times between 1957 and her last visit in 2010 (not including nine unofficial refuelling stops). She toured all 10 provinces and three territories, speaking admirably of the country’s diversity, traditions, culture and natural beauty.

Former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, who represented the Queen in Ottawa from 2000 to 2005, said the Queen understood that Canada is the “senior dominion” in the British Commonwealth and always respected that. During official tours, political discussions were off limits, so conversations often revolved around lighter topics such as the Queen’s grandchildren, her beloved dogs and her passion for horse racing.

“She never ever mentioned anything politically about Canada, she never asked and she never would because she knows her role,” Ms. Clarkson told The Globe and Mail in November, 2021. “She doesn’t say, ‘And how is your Prime Minister’ or ‘What do you think about your cabinet?’ or anything like that.”

From the launching of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 to the opening of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal to the proclamation of the Constitution Act in 1982, The Globe took a look at some of the Queen’s most memorable visits to Canada.

Watch some of the highlights from Elizabeth II's Canadian visits, including her last one in 2010 where she said in a speech, 'It is very good to be home.'

The Globe and Mail

The early years

Princess Elizabeth – not yet queen – first visited Canada in 1951 in place of her father, King George VI, who was ill. She was accompanied by her husband, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. The royal couple travelled by air, train, ship and car from Oct. 8 to Nov. 12, making several stops between St. John’s and Victoria. She visited legislatures, city halls and official residences and made industry stops at paper mills, grain elevators and oil refineries.

The Queen succeeded to the throne on Feb. 6, 1952, at the age of 25, after her father died in his sleep. She was crowned on June 2, 1953. She made her first visit to Canada as head of state in 1957, arriving Oct. 12 and staying in the National Capital Region for a four-day visit. The Globe reported that the Queen and her husband – who had just been made prince earlier that year – walked in the park near Rideau Hall, where they were staying, and picked up a few of the fallen maple leaves to press and take home. She also had $1,000 in $10 bills delivered to her to pay for gifts for Rideau Hall staff.

In a speech broadcast on TV and radio the following day, she emphasized her role as Queen of Canada and spoke highly of Canada’s “character” as a nation. “Race, language, religion, culture and tradition all have some contribution to make, and when I think of the diversity of these factors in Canada today and the achievements that have grown from their union, I feel proud and happy to be Queen of such a nation,” she said.

The Queen then opened the 23rd Parliament, marking the first time a reigning monarch commenced a parliamentary session in Canada. She wore her white satin coronation gown. She later attended a state dinner alongside more than 100 noteworthy Canadians, including then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, nine lieutenant-governors and seven premiers. Quebec duckling and New Brunswick lobster were served. The Queen wore a dress featuring green velvet maple leaves, adorned with crystals and emeralds. Her fashion was closely observed by the press. The Globe described her wardrobe during her public appearances that weekend as “evidently put together to fit the background of Ottawa’s gold and red autumn hues.”

The Queen formally inaugurated work on Ottawa’s “Queensway super-highway,” now known as Highway 417, by setting off a dynamite explosion. To the surprise of many, she barely flinched when triggering the explosion.

The Queen and Prince Philip visit Stephenville, N.L., in 1959.

A group of Brownies jumping in the air to keep warm during a royal visit to Stephenville, N.L., in 1959. Erik Christensen/The Globe and Mail

The Queen and Philip returned to Canada less than two years later for a 45-day tour of the country – their longest Canadian visit ever. The Queen attended the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway at the U.S.-Canada border on June 26, 1959, where she was joined by Mr. Diefenbaker and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. After addressing the crowd, the Queen and Mr. Eisenhower boarded the Royal Yacht Britannia and entered the lift locks, officially opening the seaway for business.

The royal couple sailed into the sweltering Toronto Harbour aboard the Britannia. Massive crowds greeted them during their stops across the city, with several people fainting from the heat.

Their first evening in Toronto featured a state dinner, hosted by then lieutenant-governor John Keiller MacKay, at the historic Royal York hotel, which removed its revolving door so the Queen could enter the building in her ball gown. Speaking at the dinner, the Queen noted her warm welcome: “Although we do not live in Canada all the time, my husband and I always feel very much at home in this lovely country. Each time I come here I am fascinated by your way of life, your homes, your work and your games and recreations.”

The couple also attended the 100th running of the Queen’s Plate, the country’s oldest thoroughbred horse race, in Toronto. The Queen presented her traditional 50 guineas in the winner’s circle, talking with the jockeys and patting the horses.

During a visit to the Calgary Stampede, the royal couple enjoyed an evening of chuckwagon racing. An exhausted-looking Queen needed some social backup from her husband during a tour of the Stampede barbecues, so Philip approached a group of men cooking beans in a massive tureen. The beans had been marinating for months, turning into what Globe columnist Scott Young described as “a state as unbeanlike as possible” and letting off a scent that even caused the mosquitoes to turn tail.

Philip peered into the tureen and, through the rising steam, said “straight from the tin, eh?” The Queen, a few metres away, smiled at the laughter that ensued from Philip’s remark. It’s unclear if he ate any of the beans.

“The moment was made. One of those little things which never will make the joke books, but which men remember,” Mr. Young wrote. The page next to his column featured an advertisement for Libby’s deep-browned beans, which read, “Don’t they look good!”

Thirty-eight First Nations welcomed the royal couple in Nanaimo, B.C., and declared the Queen a princess of the Salish Nation. She was offered a serving of Indigenous ice cream from a yellow pail but politely declined.

“Fingers had dipped into the pail earlier for appreciative licks. The Queen beamed back … but did not dip,” read a Globe report from July 17, 1959.

A few days later in the Yukon, the Queen missed a planned visit to Dawson City and Mayo because she was feeling unwell. Philip went in her place. Headlines around the world highlighted how exhausted the Queen looked. Rumours swirled about her condition, with some saying the pace of the tour was too gruelling and others suggesting she ate something that made her ill.

It was later revealed to be morning sickness from her pregnancy with Prince Andrew. The Globe reported that the Queen had quietly told Mr. Diefenbaker she was expecting and he offered to adjust her tour if needed, but she insisted on completing it.

The marathon royal tour covered more than 24,000 kilometres, capturing the attention of Canadians from all walks of life: Newfoundland fisherman, Quebec miners, Prairie farmers and lumbermen of the West.

The Queen addresses Quebec's legislature on Oct. 10, 1964, one of her most infamous Canadian visits due to the hostile reaction by many Quebecers. Booing drowned out applause after her speech, which was delivered in French and English. John McNeill/The Globe and Mail

Outside Quebec City's Citadel, separatists raised V-signs and waved Quebec flags as she inspected a regimental honour guard. Boris Spremo/The Globe and Mail

Separatism greets the Queen in Quebec

The Queen conducted several shorter visits to Canada in the 1960s and 70s. Her 1964 visit was particularly challenging, as the mood in Quebec had changed with the rise of separatism.

The tour featured stops in Charlottetown and Quebec City for the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the meetings of the Fathers of Confederation. The Quebec visit was clouded by threats from separatist demonstrations and concerns about a potential assassination attempt against the Queen. Some British churches held special prayers for her safety before the royal couple headed to Canada. Leading British newspapers sent their correspondents to cover the turmoil in Quebec.

Bernard Cloutier, a Paris-based promoter of the Quebec independence movement, accused the federal government of inviting the Queen to Canada as a political ploy.

“Out of the reports, some alarmist, some highly responsible, emerges a consensus: Though separatism is still a minority movement, it must be taken seriously,” The Globe reported.

Anti-monarchy protesters took to the streets as the royal couple dined at Quebec City’s Château Frontenac for an official dinner with then-premier Jean Lesage and Prime Minister Lester Pearson. The crowds chanted “Elizabeth stay home,” prompting Quebec City’s riot squad to club protesters. The royal couple was not harmed. Globe columnist Bruce West called the protests “an insult to Canada.”

The couple’s last stop in Ottawa was rather uneventful compared with their time in Quebec. They laid a wreath at the National War Memorial and attended a state dinner hosted by Mr. Pearson.

The separatist protests and security concerns left a dark mark on the 1964 visit, reflected in a Globe report from the Queen’s departure: “When the jet was airborne into the overcast, the shoulders of the RCMP officers relaxed just a little – they had been tense for nine days – and a reporter remarked: ‘The sound you hear is a national sigh of relief.’”

Canada's centennial year, 1967, gave the Queen a busy schedule: hundreds of balloons are released at Parliament Hill after she cut a 30-foot-high birthday cake on Canada Day.

The Queen and her entourage visit Expo 67 in Montreal. John McNeill/The Globe and Mail

Expo 67, the Centennial and the Olympics

The royal couple returned to Canada in 1967 to mark Canada’s Centennial in Ottawa and at Expo 67 in Montreal. Speaking to a crowd of 25,000 people on Parliament Hill, the Queen acknowledged French-Canadians’ contribution to the nation and predicted they would have a growing role in Canadian society. She encouraged Canadians to settle their differences through “tolerance, goodwill and understanding,” as the Fathers of Confederation had done 100 years prior.

However, the security concerns that surrounded the 1964 Quebec visit lingered as the Queen made her way up the St. Lawrence River for Expo 67. A Quebec separatist group warned that “French-Canadian patriots” would intercept the Britannia’s route to Montreal. The yacht trip went smoothly despite the threats.

When the Queen arrived at the Expo, she thrilled crowds as she took an impromptu monorail ride, breaking from the intense security that surrounded her. “The Queen salvaged Quebec’s honour. … A Queen in a minirail is not seen every day. A Queen who escapes from the straitjacket of the RCMP is not to be seen so often either,” read Montréal-Matin, a Conservative-leaning French-language tabloid.

The Queen’s visit to the Expo pavilions was watched closely. Reporters noted how she spent 30 minutes at the Ontario pavilion – longer than at any other province’s spot – and only made one stop at the pavilion dedicated to Indigenous peoples.

Andrew Delisle, chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, showed the Queen around this pavilion and did not shy away from describing the harsh truths about the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada. The Queen fell silent listening to Mr. Delisle. She did not acknowledge signs with slogans reading “The white men fought each other for our lands, and we were embroiled in the white man’s wars” and “Give us the right to manage our own affairs.” Mr. Delisle said he expected a bit more of a reaction from the Queen during the 13-minute tour.

The Queen attends a dinner with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Montreal in 1976. Erik Christensen/The Globe and Mail

The Queen returned to Montreal in July, 1976, to formally open the Olympics. The Games were a family event, with the Queen’s daughter, Princess Anne, competing as a member of the British equestrian team. The Queen was accompanied by Philip and their sons, Charles, Andrew and Edward, as well as Anne’s husband, Mark Phillips.

Anne had a rough go at the Games. Her horse, Goodwill, fell on one of the jumps, taking Anne down with it. The Princess suffered some bruising and a minor concussion. A reporter standing near the Queen said she showed no emotion, simply nodding, when her daughter fell. The British team eventually pulled out of the competition after two of their horses were injured.

The Queen’s time in Montreal went much more smoothly on the security front compared with previous visits. The royal couple even drove through downtown streets in an open car.

The tour included a stop in Nova Scotia, where the royal couple visited a shipyard. They also went to Fredericton, where the Queen warned that bilingualism is “not an easy thing” to preserve. She said the province, which was 40-per-cent French-speaking at the time, served as an example of how people from different cultural backgrounds can co-exist.

The Queen returned to Ottawa in October, 1977, marking her Silver Jubilee. Then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who had introduced an official policy of multiculturalism and a bilingual framework in 1971, hosted a state dinner at Rideau Hall for the Queen, where he announced that the government had set aside $300,000 to help more young Canadians become bilingual.

The Queen delivered the Throne Speech on Oct. 18, highlighting national unity concerns, particularly among Quebeckers, the Atlantic Provinces and the West.

“Given the new economic realities to which Canada must adjust, and the urgency of promoting linguistic and cultural harmony, it is readily apparent that Canada is now entering a new era,” she said. “It can be an era of increasing confrontation, tension and division or an era of enhanced freedom, co-operation and unity of purpose. Fundamentally, the choice must be made by every citizen every day.”

The Queen, watched by Pierre Trudeau and assorted politicians, signs the Constitution Act into law, making Canada's founding document a purely Canadian rather than British law for the first time. Ron Poling/The Canadian Press

Below the Queen's signature is that of Jean Chrétien, then the attorney-general and later the prime minister. Andy Clark / UPC

Royal proclamation of the Constitution Act

One of the Queen’s most notable visits to Canada took place from April 15 to April 19, 1982, to mark the proclamation of the Constitution Act. Pierre Trudeau hosted a luncheon at his official residence, attended by 11 cabinet ministers and premiers William Davis and Richard Hatfield – the only two provincial leaders who supported the prime minister’s constitutional position. Mr. Trudeau’s sons, Justin, Sacha and Michel, greeted the Queen in the hallway before the luncheon.

On April 17, the Queen made her way to Parliament Hill, where some 32,000 people gathered in the rain to watch her and the prime minister sign the proclamation of the Constitution Act, officially severing Canada’s final colonial tie to Britain. Security for the outdoor ceremony carried a price tag of about $250,000 – a quarter of the $1-million budget for the event. Guests were soaked in a downpour and couldn’t hear any of the speeches in the wind, as the words echoed off the Parliament buildings. Some people covered their heads with chairs left empty by guests who chose to leave. The wind nearly blew the Queen’s speech out of her hands at one point.

“Visibly unsettled, she deliberately turned the page and looked toward Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau with a gesture that seemed close to helpless despair. He had settled the Constitution, but he let everyone down on the weather,” read a Globe report.

With a few signatures, Canada achieved full independence and enshrined the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in its Constitution. However, The Globe’s Ottawa bureau reported that the Privy Council Office nearly forgot an important detail for the historic moment: an appropriate pen to sign the constitutional document. The day before, a staffer was sent to Birks, the high-end jewellery and silverware store, to buy a $75 gold pen for the occasion.

Pierre Trudeau raised eyebrows as the Queen departed Ottawa. He performed a pirouette on the tarmac of the Ottawa airport – a gesture he made famous in 1977 when he executed the ballet spin behind the Queen’s back at Buckingham Palace.

The Queen and Prime Minister Stephen Harper wait for 2010's Canada Day festivities to begin in Ottawa. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Spectators wait for the Queen outside the Cathedral Church of St. James in Toronto. Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press

The final visit

The 84-year-old Queen made her 22nd official and final visit to Canada in 2010, deemed “the year Canada grew up” by The Globe and Mail. Vancouver had hosted the Winter Olympics in February, Canada hosted the G8 and G20 summits, and the Queen joined Canadians to celebrate the country’s 143rd birthday on Parliament Hill.

Accompanied by Philip, the nine-day tour started in Halifax to mark the navy’s 100th anniversary, where then-Prime minister Stephen Harper greeted the Queen before they ventured to Ottawa for Canada Day celebrations.

“We could imagine no better gift on our national birthday than to share it with our Queen,” Mr. Harper said.

The Queen wore a Maple Leaf pin and a white hat with a large red flower as she celebrated Canada Day alongside 100,000 people on Parliament Hill. While in Ottawa, she also met with then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who said she has a “magnificent sense of humour and sense of the absurd.”

The Queen departed for Winnipeg, where she dedicated a cornerstone for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The cubic foot of granite came from the Runnymede meadows on the upper reaches of England’s Thames River, where the Queen’s ancestor, King John, signed the Magna Carta on June 15, 1215. The stone would eventually be set in interior masonry beside the museum entrance doors used by students.

The Queen then made her way to Toronto to attend the 151st running of the Queen’s Plate at Woodbine Racetrack, marking her fourth attendance at the event.

A trip to nearby Waterloo, Ont., featured a stop at the Research in Motion facility. The Queen was presented with a white BlackBerry Bold 9700 – all the rage at the time – but an RIM executive assured reporters she was already an avid user of the device.

Back in Toronto on the evening of July 5, the Queen attended a dinner at the Royal York – the same hotel she graced during her 1959 tour of Canada. However, the event got off to a rough start when a power outage left parts of the city in the dark during a blistering heat wave. After a few minutes of darkness, the hotel’s backup generator lit up some chandeliers and the 380-person dinner went ahead. A Royal York spokesperson said the Queen was comfortable, and other guests reported that the air conditioning was still working.

Mr. Harper addressed the Queen and invited her to unveil a new Hockey Hall of Fame exhibit commemorating Canada’s gold-medal victories in hockey at the Vancouver Olympics earlier that year.

“As Queen of Canada, you share in the recent triumph of our Canadian Olympic hockey champions,” Mr. Harper said. “And so we say that you are not only victorious, happy and glorious, you are also Canada’s most valuable player.”

With reports from Rick Cash and Janice Dickson

The Decibel

Vicky Mochama, a Globe contributor who writes about the Royal Family, looks back at the Queen’s achievements and what the monarchy’s future might be without her. Subscribe for more episodes.

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1939 Royal Tour

Article by Carolyn Harris

Published Online April 22, 2015

Last Edited March 25, 2022

Albert and Elizabeth

The future King George VI was born on 14 December 1895. At the insistence of his great-grandmother, Queen Victoria , he was named Albert after his great-grandfather, who died on the same day in 1861. As the second son of the future King George V , the young prince was not expected to succeed to the throne and instead trained for a naval career. At 17, he visited Canada for the first time on a six-month training cruise in 1913.

In 1930, the Canadian government requested that the Prince, who had become Duke of York in 1920, be chosen as Governor General . The British government decided against this because of the changing relationship between the United Kingdom and Canada — including Canada’s growing autonomy — soon to be enacted under the Statute of Westminster .

In 1923, the Duke of York married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the ninth of the 10 children of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, members of the Scottish aristocracy. The wedding and the arrival of the royal couple’s two daughters, the future Queen Elizabeth II (born 1926) and Princess Margaret (1930–2002), attracted public interest throughout the English-speaking world, including Canada. (When her daughter succeeded to the throne in 1952, Elizabeth became known as the Queen Mother .)

On 20 January 1936, King George V died and was succeeded by the Duke of York’s older brother, who became King Edward VIII . Almost a year later, Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American socialite. The Duke of York became King as a result of the Abdication Crisis and assumed the name George VI to symbolize continuity with the reign of his father, George V.

King and Queen of Canada

In 1931, the Statute of Westminster granted Canada control over its own foreign policy. The Statute changed the relationship between Canada and the monarchy, creating a distinct Canadian Crown . Canada became the political equal of the United Kingdom, sharing a common monarch. The Governor General’s position transformed from representative of the British government to representative of the shared monarch alone. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth therefore toured in 1939 as King and Queen of Canada.

Lord Tweedsmuir , Governor General from 1935 to 1940, extended the invitation to the royal couple to visit Canada after a planned tour of India was cancelled in 1938. Tweedsmuir met with George VI on 24 September 1938 at Buckingham Palace, where the King confirmed the historic trip to Canada. The itinerary was published in newspapers on 4 January 1939. The threat of the Second World War influenced preparations. Queen Elizabeth later recalled, “We were going [to go to Canada] in a battleship and had to change to a liner in case [the warship] was wanted. It was as close as that.”

Canada by Train

The King and Queen spent a month in Canada, touring the country from 17 May to 15 June (excluding four days in the United States from 8 to 11 June). They crossed the country twice in a blue and silver royal train that became the most recognizable symbol of the tour. The tour began in Quebec City when the royal couple arrived on the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Australia escorted by two destroyers and two cruisers of the Royal Canadian Navy . Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King formally welcomed the couple with a speech that included the words, “Today as never before the throne has become the centre of our national life.”

The westbound journey included stops in Trois-Rivières , Montreal , Ottawa , Kingston , Toronto , Winnipeg , Regina , Calgary , Banff , Vancouver and Victoria , as well as numerous small towns and villages. The train then travelled east, stopping, among other places, in Jasper , Edmonton , Saskatoon , Sudbury , Guelph , Kitchener , Windsor , Hamilton , St. Catharines and Niagara Falls . After the visit to the United States, the royal couple returned to Canada and continued their tour through Rivière-du-Loup , Fredericton , Saint John , Moncton and Charlottetown before departing by ship from Halifax . Before returning to Britain, the royal couple sailed to St. John’s , capital of the separate Dominion of Newfoundland at the time.

Mackenzie King welcomed the royal couple at every stop on the tour. George VI gave royal assent to nine bills and became the first Canadian monarch to directly meet his Parliament . He and Elizabeth also dedicated the National War Memorial in Ottawa and laid the cornerstone on the new Supreme Court of Canada building then under construction.

First Royal Walkabout

The now-familiar royal walkabout, where members of the royal family meet and greet crowds of citizens during their tours, was spontaneously born in Ottawa in 1939. After dedicating the National War Memorial on 21 May, the royal couple, instead of returning to their motorcade immediately afterward, spent half an hour mingling with the 25,000 First World War veterans who were part of a crowd of at least 100,000 people. It was a stunning gesture, especially in an age when members of the royalty were often perceived as distant figureheads. A CBC radio announcer covering the event observed the warm rapport between the royal couple and the crowd: “One these old veterans is patting the King most affectionately on the shoulder…Her Majesty is chattering with one of the veterans of the amputations association…The Queen is speaking to a blind veteran now…The King is shaking hands….”

Tweedsmuir , who was also there, recognized the lasting impact of the walkabout on the eve of the Second World War : “One old fellow said to me, ‘Aye, man if Hitler could just see this.’ It was wonderful proof of what a people’s King means.”

Great Spectacle

The King and Queen were greeted by enormous crowds throughout the tour. The CBC described the reception as “a majestic mayhem.” Millions of Canadians gathered in cities, towns and rural railway crossings to see the royal couple or to simply watch the train pass through areas where no stop was scheduled. The enthusiasm was shared by Canadians of all backgrounds. In Quebec , prior to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, the Crown was viewed as a protector of minority rights within the larger democracy and the royal couple was well received by French Canadians. Queen Elizabeth wrote to her daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth II , “The French people in Quebec and Ottawa were wonderfully loyal; & [in]  Montrea l there must have been 2,000,000 people, all very enthusiastic & glad to have an excuse to show their feelings. Yesterday in Toronto it was the same….”

The King and Queen gave speeches in both French and English. While the King still suffered from a mild stammer when giving speeches in English, he did not suffer the same impediment in his French addresses.

In his journals, Mackenzie King also made frequent mention of the enthusiastic crowds at every stop. For example, when the royal train reached Brandon , Manitoba , there was “wonderful cheering. A long bridge overhead crowded with people. The hour: 11 at night.”

French Canadian Responses

The enthusiastic response to the royal tour in Quebec was influenced by the views of French Canadian political and religious leaders. Two French Canadian cabinet ministers, Ernest Lapointe and Fernand Rinfret, encouraged public interest in the tour. Camillien Houde , the mayor of Montreal , ensured that Montreal spent more money on royal tour events than Toronto . Cardinal Jean-Marie-Rodrigue Villeneuve , archbishop of Quebec, had met King George V and supported the monarchy. At the time, the Roman Catholic school system in Quebec taught that the British conquest of Quebec had protected the region from the secular influence of the French Revolution.

The presence of the King and Queen in Quebec received extensive press coverage, and Quebec tourism increased by 65 per cent in the aftermath of the tour. French-language newspapers emphasized that French Canadians were loyal to the Crown and admired the royal couple on a personal level but did not support British imperialism or view themselves as having assimilated into the British Empire. La Presse criticized the displays of British flags and decorations in Quebec as “imperialistic propaganda” and instead placed the royal tour in a French Canadian context, stating, “Why don’t we, French Canadians, profit from the occasion to manifest our loyalty and attachment to our sovereigns, certainly, but also to our language, our nationality, our rights, our ethnic character. If we must have inscriptions, let them be worded in French, if we cheer, cheer in French….”

American coverage of the royal tour assumed that Quebec was comparatively indifferent or hostile to the presence of the King and Queen in the province. Both Time and Life magazines reported that the royal couple had travelled in bulletproof limousines in Quebec City and Montreal for security reasons without mentioning that the royal couple would use the same kind of vehicles at other stops across Canada. Quebec commentators objected to the implications of this coverage. Le Devoir declared, “The only gangsters or gunmen we have come to us from the US” and compared the fine French cuisine that the King and Queen had enjoyed in Quebec to the “hot dogs or peanut butter sandwiches” that the royal couple might receive in the United States.

Media Coverage in English Canada

Coverage of the 1939  Royal Tour was extensive in both Canada and the wider world. CBC Radio sent a staff of 100 to cover the tour, and newspapers reported extensively on the events. The tour provided the impetus for inaugurating a Canadian shortwave broadcasting service. There was an international press corps as well, which also travelled on the royal train.

Queen Elizabeth wrote to her mother-in-law, Queen Mary: “In Ottawa , we had a reception for all the journalists who are travelling with us on the pilot train — about 80 of them! The Americans are particularly easy and pleasant, and have been amazed I believe at the whole affair. Of course, they have no idea of our Constitution or how the monarchy works….”

There were a few mishaps in the media coverage, including a Winnipeg radio announcer who swore on the air during his live commentary after becoming tongue-tied trying to describe the reception of the King and Queen by Mackenzie King and Winnipeg mayor John Queen.

American Visit

In the midst of their Canadian tour, the royal couple spent four days in the United States, which included a visit with US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt at his private residence at Hyde Park in New York and in Washington, DC. The royal couple visited the British and Canadian pavilions at the 1939 New York World’s Fair and enjoyed a picnic lunch of hot dogs with the Roosevelts.

The King and Queen developed a strong rapport with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, which lasted throughout the Second World War . Queen Elizabeth recalled decades later that the American visit “was very valuable because the King was able to talk to Roosevelt. Endless night talks they had, because Hitler was looming then.”

“Canada Made Us”

Although the original purpose of the 1939 tour was to allow the monarch to engage with Canadians as King of Canada, the impending outbreak of war shaped the significance of the event. Queen Elizabeth alluded to the threat of war in her thank you letter to Lady Tweedsmuir , stating, “Our chief emotion is one of deep thankfulness that [the tour] was such a success, for more & more one feels that a united Empire is the only hope for this troubled world of today.”

The separation of British and Canadian foreign policy in the Statute of Westminster meant that Canada did not automatically declare war on Germany along with the United Kingdom. The tour, however, renewed ties between Canadians and Britain, helping to ensure support for joining Britain in its war effort. On 10 September 1939, Mackenzie King advised George VI to declare war on Germany in his capacity as King of Canada — just one week after the United Kingdom had made its own declaration.

For Queen Elizabeth, the 1939 tour began a 50-year personal relationship with Canada that helped establish her and her husband as a modern royal couple and set precedents for future Canadian royal tours. She would say later that “Canada made us.” Her great-grandson Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge , repeated this sentiment in 2011 at the conclusion of his first royal tour in Canada with his wife, Catherine, The Duchess of Cambridge . As the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth visited Canada 14 times and became a patron of numerous Canadian charities and honorary colonel-in-chief of Canadian military regiments. In 2000, the Queen Mother was appointed to the Order of Canada at the age of 100.

Interested in the monarchy?

Royal Family

Further reading.

Arthur Bousfield and Garry Toffoli, Home to Canada: Royal Tours 1786–2010 (2010), Bousfield and Toffoli, Royal Spring: The Royal Tour of 1939 (1989); J. William Galbraith, John Buchan: Model Governor General (2013); William Shawcross, ed., Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (2012).

External Links

CBC's archived coverage of the first royal walkabout

A feature on the dazzling cars used by the royals on their 1939 tour

A National Film Board documentary of the 1939 royal tour

Associated Collections

Recommended, king george vi, queen mother (hm queen elizabeth the queen mother), king george v, royal tours of canada, 10 memorable royal tours of canada, 1901 royal tour, william lyon mackenzie king.

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir

King edward viii, queen elizabeth ii, prince william (hrh the prince of wales), catherine (hrh the princess of wales).

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Here are all of the times Queen Elizabeth II visited Toronto

Hannah Alberga , CTVNewsToronto.ca Journalist

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Queen Elizabeth II died at 96 years old on Thursday after reigning the monarch for the longest spanning period in Britain’s history.

At just 25 years old, she stepped into her royal role following the death of her father King George VI on Feb. 6, 1952.

Here is a timeline of the Queen’s seven visits to Toronto over the course of her lifetime, according to footage from the CTV News Toronto and City of Toronto archives.

The Queen’s first visit to Toronto took place in 1951. At the time, she was a princess standing in place for her father who was ill. A royal motorcade took the princess down Queen Street West to Old City Hall.

Photos capture Elizabeth at other notable city sites, including the Royal York Hotel, where she would later return on future visits. She also made an appearance at Sunnybrook Hospital and the Hospital for Sick Children.

Her first visit to the city in official capacity as The Queen took place nearly a decade later as part of a 1959 tour of Canada. During the 45-day tour, which encompassed 10 provinces and two territories, she waved from a car cascading down Bay Street.

Alongside Prince Philip, Elizabeth sailed into the Toronto Harbour aboard the Britannia. There, she was welcomed in Etobicoke at the 100th Queen’s Plate at the Woodbine racetrack.

The Queen’s following visit to Toronto took place just a few years later in June 1973. As part of an extensive tour of the province, she opened Scarborough’s new Civic Centre, and visited Queen’s Park and Ontario Place. At High Park, she attended a Black Creek Pioneer Village exhibit and was gifted a hand-made corn broom.

A year later, the Queen returned to Toronto to celebrate the city’s 150th anniversary. At the festivities she made appearances at Toronto’s festival of international culture and formally dedicated the Peace Garden on Nathan Phillips Square.

A crowd applauded her arrival at a gala dinner with Ontario Premier William Davis where a tiara crowned her head.

She also visited the Royal Ontario Museum and was greeted by thousands of members of the Italian community on St. Clair Avenue West.

On June 29, 1997, the Queen visited the Royal York Hotel where she joined Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien along with 900 others at a state dinner.

On Oct. 9, 2002, the Queen arrived in Toronto with Prince Philip to celebrate her Golden Jubilee, marking 50 years since she ascended the throne. Her visit to the city was part of a 12 day journey across the country to celebrate the occasion.

From June 29 to July 6, 2010, the Queen visited Halifax, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Waterloo and Toronto. This marked her twenty-second tour of the country.

Again, she made an appearance at Woodbine Racetrack for the Queen’s Plate, a race meeting she first attended in 1959.

This was the Queen’s last visit to Toronto. 

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A smiling Queen Elizabeth II waves to a happy crowd of on-lookers at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds in Toronto, Ont., June 26, 1973. While at the C.N.E. The Queen and Prince Philip were entertained by various dance troupes and choirs. (CP PHOTO)

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Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 1959 Royal Tour of Canada

Visit of Prince Charles and Camilla to Canada Prince Charles and Camilla Visit Canada, Confronting Legacy of the Crown

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Charles acknowledges a grim chapter in Indigenous history after his visit with the Dene people.

YELLOWKNIFE, Northwest Territories — Prince Charles ended his three-day trip to Canada on Thursday by calling on Canadians to listen to the “the truth of the lived experiences” of Indigenous people who were forced to attend residential schools designed to eradicate their cultures and where abuse, suffering and deaths were common.

“It has been deeply moving to have met survivors of residential schools who, with such courage, have shared their experiences,” Charles said in a speech in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories and a city with a large population of Indigenous people.

“On behalf of my wife and myself, I want to acknowledge their suffering and to say how much our hearts go out to them and their families,” Charles added.

His speech came after he had met privately in nearby Dettah, an Indigenous hamlet, with leaders of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, some of whom attended the now notorious schools.

A year ago, Canadians were shaken when ground-penetrating radar at a property surrounding a former school in British Columbia found evidence that the remains of hundreds of people, mostly children, were buried there. Similar searches at other school sites have since produced similar findings.

Charles urged Canadians to continue to reconcile with Indigenous people, a program that is one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s top priorities.

“We all have a responsibility to listen, understand and act in ways that foster relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada,” he told a crowd gathered in a downtown park, before setting off to unveil a plaque marking the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II, his mother, as head of state of not just Britain, but also Canada.

As Charles and Camilla, his wife, flew back to Britain on a Royal Canadian Air Force Airbus, it was too early to tell how his words would reverberate among Canadians. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Canadians do not favor his succession to the throne. But that will happen automatically without an amendment to Canada’s constitution, a process so difficult that it’s seen as unlikely.

Crowds have been modest to respectable throughout the visit, which also included stops in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Ottawa, the capital. But none of Charles’s stops attracted the numbers of Canadians lured by his sons on their official visits to Canada, nor did they come close to the numbers produced when he toured Canada with his first wife, Diana.

The final day of Charles’s tour of Canada was marked by drumming, dancing and Indigenous games.

Charles was greeted with a solemn traditional fire ceremony beneath an open tepee frame when he arrived at an assembly hall of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.

He entered the hall’s circular community room, where a group of Indigenous men played Dene hand games, in which two teams use ritualistic movements to try to hide a small token from each other while drummers egged on the action.

While at the Dene community, Charles held the private meeting with several Indigenous leaders, which went on for about twice as long as its scheduled 20 minutes. Officials offered no details about the discussion, which occurred as Camilla conducted a private visit to the community’s small elementary school.

After the meeting, Charles joined a large number of residents in a round dance held in a community room, accompanied by eight Indigenous drummers. After one and a half revolutions of the hall, Charles exited, smiling as he waved a small Yellowknives flag he had received from an Indigenous woman.

— Ian Austen

A royal tour confronts Canada’s legacy of discrimination against Indigenous people.

DETTAH, Northwest Territories — Royal visits are usually marked by pomp, carefully scripted ceremonies and lavish evening affairs. And there has certainly been some of that during a three-day visit to Canada by Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, including a glittery reception in Ottawa at the official residence of Queen Elizabeth’s representative in Canada.

But on Thursday, the last day of the royal tour, the tenor was far more subdued tone as Charles and Camilla visited the Northwest Territories.

The couple headed to a far northern Indigenous community, the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, where the history with the British monarchy has been painful.

There’s a century-old treaty that the community says the Crown has infringed upon. And there’s the grim legacy of Canada’s now defunct compulsory residential school system for Indigenous Children, for which the Dene hold the Crown partly responsible.

The royal couple arrived in Yellowknife, the territorial capital, on Thursday at about 3:30 p.m. Eastern, before traveling to the Dene First Nation community. There, they stepped out onto gravel and headed a meeting with Indigenous leaders, where difficult topics were broached.

Charles joined two Indigenous chiefs at a large round table where they exchanged some small talk, including about previous visits by the royal family to the Northwest Territories, before reporters were escorted out of the meeting.

Later, Charles spoke about having been moved as he listened to Indigenous people speak about their experiences in the residential schools and offered his sympathies over what they had endured.

Charles’s itinerary for his Canadian tour, including the visit to Yellowknives, was set by the government in Ottawa, underlining the extent to which the country’s history of discrimination against Indigenous people has become a major political issue.

In April, Pope Francis issued the first ever direct papal apology to Indigenous people for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the residential schools. He plans to visit Canada in July to offer the same apology face-to-face.

On Monday, Charles and Camilla attended a reconciliation event in the Province of Newfoundland, where they met with Mary Simon , the first Indigenous person to serve as governor general of Canada, the queen’s official representative in Canada.

In the historic city of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Charles said, “I know that our visit here this week comes at an important moment, with Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples across Canada committing to reflect honestly and openly on the past and to forge a new relationship for the future.”

Edward Sangris, 68, is one of the Dene chiefs who met Charles and Camilla on Thursday. He was among the thousands of children sent off to the residential schools. His was a Catholic-run institution in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, until his father defied authorities and kept him home.

He declined in an interview to discuss his experiences there, but said that the schools — which have become a national scandal and which a government commission found to be a form of “ cultural genocide ” — would be a topic of conversation.

“This is one way of reconciliation,” Chief Sangris said. “Even though they’re not directly responsible for the harm and the pain that was caused, they’re indirectly responsible for the actions of the Canadian government.”

Given that Charles is not yet king, Chief Sangris said ahead of their meeting that he did not anticipate an apology from Charles on behalf of the royal family.

Charles and Camilla’s visit to Dettah was scheduled to last one hour. The couple’s agenda included for meetings in the territorial capital of Yellowknife with members of a special miliary reserve unit in remote northern communities, and visit the fast melting remains of an ice road for a discussion about climate change.

Chief Sangris said that he recognized the responsibility and role of the government of Canada in Indigenous affairs, but that he believed the monarchy’s symbolic role in making treaties also made it responsible for subsequent violations.

In addition to grievances over Indigenous schools, the Dene believe that the compensation they receive for allowing mining projects on their traditional lands is less than it should be under the treaty with the Crown.

Ahead of the royal meeting, Chief Sangris said it was unlikely to resolve that dispute or to address other critical Dene issues, including a severe housing shortage. Chief Sangris’s father met with Charles in 1970, when Charles and his mother, Queen Elizabeth, visited Yellowknives. Chief Sangris met them then, too, and said that many issues raised at the time remain unresolved.

Of Thursday’s visit, Chief Sangris said, “I don’t know what it’s going to achieve for us.”

Broadly speaking, this is a time of tension over the role of the monarchy in Britain’s former overseas dominions. Separate tours of the Caribbean this year by Prince Edward, Charles’s brother, and Prince William, the future king’s son, were the target of protests against the monarchy and Britain’s brutal historical involvement with slavery.

In Canada, Charles has not faced such vocal public opposition. But polls show that an ever-declining number of Canadians want to swear allegiance to another British monarch, because the institution appears increasingly irrelevant to their lives.

An earlier version of this article misstated Yellowknife’s official government designation. It is a territorial capital, not a provincial capital.

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The royal tour resurfaces debate between Canada’s monarchists and republicans.

The royal visit to Canada comes as the country prepares for Victoria Day on Monday, a holiday commemorating the birth of Queen Victoria, who is often called the Mother of Confederation, the historical process that gave birth to Canada.

For most Canadians the federal holiday, punctuated by nighttime fireworks, simply means enjoying an extra day of rest or bracing for congested highways as many race to take advantage of a long weekend.

But for a relatively small though committed group of Canadians trying to burnish the image of the British monarchy, the lack of enthusiasm for the holiday is a sore point.

“This is a great grievance to Canadian royalists, because the government does almost nothing about celebrating the day,” said Arthur Bousfield, the chairman of the Canadian Royal Heritage Trust.

Mr. Bousfield was also disappointed at the lack of ceremony for Prince Charles and Camilla, noting that they are spending just three days in the country, following an equally short visit in 2017. (Other royal visits have been a week or longer.)

“The legitimate criticism that I think one can have of the monarchy in Canada now is that we don’t get our share of it,” he said. “We have now half the population, approximately, of the United Kingdom, so really, we should have half the royal family’s time.”

Still, some of Canada’s monarchists are happy simply to have Charles in their midst, no matter how brief the trip.

For Gail David Stacey, 76, royal watching is a family tradition, passed down from her mother and grandmother.

Outside the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Tuesday, where Charles laid a wreath, Ms. Stacey carried two small Canadian flags as she awaited the royal couple alongside her 17-year-old grandson.

Though she has seen the queen three times, her children aren’t as “intense” in their interest in the royal family, she said.

“But I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Ms. Stacey added. “Don’t forget, he’s going to be our future king.”

John Fraser, who has written a book about Canada’s relationship to the Crown, said a small minority of Canadians, perhaps less than one-fifth, are “die-hard” fans of the royal family.

He described them as “romantic monarchists who see that the Crown is like a golden thread woven through our history.”

“To me, it’s a beautiful thing,” said Mr. Fraser, the founder and president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada, an organization that commissions research on the country’s constitutional monarchy. “A mature country takes its history and carries it forward, and can show how the monarchy system evolved.”

Over the years, many Canadians have grown tired of the monarchy and question why such an archaic institution should play a role in a modern and increasingly diverse society.

But Canadian royalists put a different twist on that point of view.

“One of the reasons they’re disappointed in the monarchy is because they want to see more presence and more activity from the monarch,” said Cian Horrobin, a spokesman for the Monarchist League of Canada. “It’s actually this desire to have it more integrated into the life of Canadians that’s leading to a kind of disillusionment.”

Leila El Shennawy contributed reporting from Ottawa.

— Vjosa Isai

Meet Yellowknife, a small territorial capital that lies at the edge of vast wilderness.

YELLOWKNIFE, Northwest Territories — Prince Charles and Camilla, his wife, are ending their three-day tour of Canada on Thursday in a city that looms large in the minds of many Canadians as a gateway to their country’s vast north — a place few of them will ever see.

Before touching down, the royal couple’s aircraft flew over the still largely frozen waters of Great Slave Lake, a vast body of water in a country dotted with large lakes.

The lake’s ice is in seasonal retreat. Ice roads that cross the lake in winter have closed now, and residents of island homes drag canoes to town in case they need them on their journey back.

The current site of Yellowknife is within a large area of the Dene people, who once followed and hunted caribou. Gold mining turned Yellowknife into a boom town during the 1930s, and after World War II, it became the seat of the regional government and the administrative center for the territory.

Yellowknife remains a popular destination for younger Canadians just starting careers or seeking adventure after finishing their studies.

Even on weeknights, many young newcomers pack bars and restaurants like Bullocks Bistro, which features Arctic char and other northern fish.

“Whenever I talk to graduating students, I tell them that they’re going to have great opportunities here,” said Rebecca Atly, the mayor of Yellowknife.

Much of Yellowknife is dominated by the big box stores and suburban housing familiar to North Americans, even if the buildings sometimes have smaller windows to cope with brutal winters. But the city’s Old Town maintains some of the unplanned charm of its early days.

With a population of 20,000, Yellowknife accounts for nearly half of the Northwest Territories’ population. Its status as the seat of government means that the courthouse, at left below, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment, at right below, dominate the downtown. Both institutions have a troubled history with the territory’s Indigenous population.

Charles and Camilla are visiting the Dettah Community of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, which lies about a half an hour’s drive from Yellowknife. On Wednesday, several of its members rehearsed their welcoming ceremony.

The Dene, unlike many Indigenous people in Canada, do not live on reserves and make up a large part of Yellowknife’s population.

The abandoned Giant Mine, which once excavated gold, lies in the distance. In 1992, nine miners died in a deliberately set explosion during a strike. The mine has left a toxic legacy of 237,000 metric tons of arsenic trioxide waste.

In recent decades, diamond mining has come to the territory, with three mines currently operating. Most workers fly in and out from other parts of Canada.

For visitors from around the world, Yellowknife’s big attraction is the spectacular display of the Northern Lights , generally most visible from September to March. For many who live in Yellowknife, Great Slave Lake and access to seemingly infinite wilderness are what keeps them there.

Sometimes, the wild is very immediate. At least five foxes were scampering around Old Town this week, seemingly unbothered by people.

— Ian Austen and Aaron Vincent Elkaim

Rehearsals, wood chopping and road repairs in advance of a royal visit.

DETTAH, Northwest Territories — A month ago, spring thawed an ice road in the Northwest Territories, rendering impassable the shortcut between the territorial capital of Yellowknife and Dettah, an Indigenous hamlet.

Ahead of Thursday’s visit by Prince Charles and Camilla, his wife, workers were busy on Wednesday fishing signs marking the ice road’s seasonal closure out of melted shoreline water and regrading the alternate road that the prince and his entourage will travel between Yellowknife and Dettah.

Dettah, along with the island of N’dilo, make up the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. While both communities have a chief, neither is an Indigenous reserve. The traditionally nomadic Dene, who once followed caribou herds, still travel widely within their vast territory by motorboat, snowmobile and airplane for hunting, fishing and to reach wellness camps, places for spiritual retreat.

Some preparations for the hour long visit by the British aristocrats to the village of about 300 people were underway on Wednesday. Three men were chopping wood for a ceremonial fire to be lit under a tepee frame to greet the visitors. A man in a backhoe was tidying up gravel and debris in front of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation office.

Early in the afternoon, drummers, elders and other community members preparing to greet the couple gathered in the circular meeting hall of the office for the first of two rehearsals. As Canadian government and Royal Household staff members looked on, Jessica Deleary, a coordinator for the visit from the First Nation, repeatedly reminded the crowd that the visit would be timed to the minute.

That, one of the participants jokingly said, meant the group must follow “English time” rather than “Dene time,” adding: “We’ll be on-time with English time.”

A suggested dress code of dark trousers, white shirts and traditional embroidered vests was proposed, with a reminder that the ceremony in the hall would be “broadcast internationally.”

In the back of the room, a remote-controlled television camera brought in for the visit was connected to a bank of servers and other electronic gear, their lights blinking and their fans whirring.

When Ms. Deleary later escorted government officials and royal household representatives through the building, one official reminded her that Charles preferred cool room temperatures. Some discussion led to a decision to switch the building’s furnace off for the night and to bring a fan into the meeting room where Charles would hold some of his meetings.

Outside, the last of the wood for the ceremonial fire was split and ready to burn.

Not so long ago, royal visits brought Canada to a halt.

This week’s visit to Canada by Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, may not be generating a lot of buzz, but that has not always been the case when royal family members have crossed the Atlantic.

In 2011, thousands of people gathered near the National War Memorial in Ottawa, the capital, to catch a glimpse of Prince William, a son of Prince Charles, and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, on their first overseas tour as a married couple. Enthusiastic crowds roared and chanted “Kate” when the couple laid a wreath at the memorial.

“The geography of Canada is unsurpassed and famous for being matched only by the hospitality of its peoples,” William said, helping generate good will for the young couple.

But few visits matched the extraordinary outpouring of adulation for Diana, the Princess of Wales, during her inaugural visit to Canada as Prince Charles’s young bride in 1983.

She spent 18 days in the country, and everywhere the couple went, enormous throngs of well wishers greeted them. The streets of Ottawa were gridlocked by the crowds. The country seemed to go out of its way to make a good impression — officials in St. John’s, Newfoundland, dispatched street cleaners and repaired sidewalks to whip the city into shape.

Their trip was capped with a “Happy Birthday” chorus sung by about 60,000 people who filled a stadium in Edmonton, Alberta, to help celebrate Princess Diana’s 22nd birthday.

“It is the birthday of my dear wife,” Charles said. “Not only that, but she had the good sense and the excellent taste to be born on Canada’s national day.”

Perhaps the only royal visits to draw comparable crowds have been those of Queen Elizabeth, who last came to Canada for the 22nd time as part of her Diamond Jubilee celebration in 2010.

At one stop in Ottawa on Canada Day, she greeted the crowd while seated in a horse-drawn carriage next to her husband, Prince Philip, complete with a procession of Royal Canadian Mounted Police on horseback, a gun salute and band music as she arrived on Parliament Hill.

“I have watched with enormous admiration how Canada has grown and matured while remaining true to its history, its distinctive character and its values,” the queen said during her visit.

Since then, the Crown’s luster has diminished, though the possibility of being close enough to gawk at royal celebrities did stir up some excitement in 2020, when it appeared that Canada would be the next home to Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan. (The couple lived briefly on Vancouver Island before moving to California.)

Prince William and Catherine, along with two of their young children, made their most recent visit to Canada in 2016, spending just over a week in British Columbia and Yukon, where the duchess’s fashion choices became a main topic of conversation.

Though Charles’s visit this week was a low-key affair, he did draw a relatively warm, if somewhat modest, crowd at a ceremony on Tuesday at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

Josée O’Leary had traveled to Ottawa from Quebec City — for a local tulip festival, not to see Charles. Still, she decided to take a peek at the royal festivities.

“It may be the only time to see Prince Charles and maybe he will be the king very soon,” she said. “I am surprised there aren’t so many people.”

Many Canadians consider the monarchy a relic of the past.

When rumors swirled about two years ago that Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle might move to Canada, there was a giddiness among some Canadians that the young royal couple could inject some glamour into the country.

Tim Hortons, the quintessentially Canadian coffee chain, offered them free coffee for life.

But the initial media frenzy that greeted their move to Canada in 2020 was also accompanied by deep skepticism among many Canadians, especially over the potential security costs for tax payers. In the end, the couple settled for a brief period on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, before decamping to Southern California.

As Prince Harry’s father, Prince Charles, and his wife Camilla visit Canada on a trip imbued with the significance of a king-in-waiting edging ever closer to his destiny, Canadians are experiencing a similar ambivalence about the Crown. Canada is a constitutional monarchy and Charles’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is the head of state, her image featured on coins and 20-dollar bills.

But, in many ways, the monarchy, an ancient institution predicated on class, blood and succession, is out of step with Canada, a country that prides itself on being a liberal and multicultural meritocracy.

Support for the monarchy was generally lukewarm in a country where many consider constitutional ties to the crown a historical relic, said Philippe Lagassé, an associate professor and an expert on the British monarchy at Carleton University in Ottawa.

“As Canada has become less of a British nation over the past century and a half, the connection to the royal family has become less obvious,” he said. “Many now see the monarchy as a vestige of the past, and something that causes apathy and bewilderment as to what purpose it serves.”

Royal visits are meant to burnish a national connection to the monarchy, but Prince Charles and Camilla, Mr. Lagassé said, septuagenarian aristocrats, “did not generate much excitement.” Sarah Brown, 33, a civil servant who lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, the first stop on the royal tour, said the monarchy was “at best irrelevant and at worst, it represents everything that’s wrong with this world.”

“It’s a system built on oppression, colonialism, racism,’’ she added. “We don’t need it. We don’t want it.”

A recent poll by Angus Reid, a leading polling company, showed that about 55 percent of Canadians supported the country remaining a constitutional monarchy under Queen Elizabeth, but that support for the monarchy drops to 34 percent with Charles as king.

Nevertheless, political analysts said a dismantling of the constitutional monarchy in the near future is unlikely given how entrenched it is in the system governing the country. Doing anything about the role of Britain’s queen or king as Canada’s official head of state would involve amending Canada’s Constitution, a process so fraught with disagreement that there is little political appetite to take it on.

The royal visit comes at a delicate moment for the Crown.

The Queen marked 70 years on the throne in February, which was supposed to offer an opportunity to reframe the royal narrative after three years of unrelenting turmoil.

The sense that the royal family was out of touch with contemporary mores was reinforced during an explosive interview last year with Oprah Winfrey in which Meghan, a biracial former actress, raised the issue of racism within the royal family. And a sex abuse scandal involving Prince Andrew has further tarnished the royal family’s image.

Still, the queen herself remains widely admired in Britain and in many Commonwealth countries, including Canada, for her work ethic and long tenure — she has edged out Queen Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Charles does not elicit the same level of enthusiasm.

One thing is certain: Prince Charles and Camilla seemed to avoid the lack of diplomacy that marked some previous royal visits.

His father Prince Philip, who died in April 2021, said this about Canada during a trip there in 1976:

“We don’t come here for our health,” he said with characteristic bluntness. “We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves.”

Vjosa Isai contributed reporting from Toronto.

— Dan Bilefsky

Charles reunites with an Indigenous leader he met during his 1970 tour.

DETTAH, Northwest Territories — In 1970, Edward Sangris joined his father Joseph, who was then the chief of what’s now known as the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, to meet Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles during their visit to the Northwest Territories.

It was part of the royal family’s tour to celebrate the territory’s centennial.

On Thursday, when Charles returned to the region and visited the Indigenous hamlet of Dettah, Edward Sangris greeted him again, this time as the chief, while Charles remained Canada’s king in waiting. After visiting Newfoundland on Tuesday and Ottawa on Wednesday, Charles and his wife Camilla wound up their three-day tour of Canada in the Northwest Territories with a schedule that emphasized Indigenous people and their issues.

The couple’s presence also served to highlight the unique and strained relationship between Indigenous people and the British Crown.

Outside the first nation’s office in Dettah on Wednesday, Chief Sangris carefully removed an oversized silver medallion from a tin box secured with hair bands.

It has been handed down from chief to chief since 1900, when the community joined a treaty with Queen Victoria and Canadian government commissioners covering 840,000 square kilometers of land.

The medallion bears Queen Victoria’s effigy on one side, and on the other a depiction of an Indigenous man in a feather headdress and a military officer shaking hands in front of a sunburst and a tepee.

“As far as the Dene are concerned, Canada is just an arm of the British monarchy,” Chief Sangris said.

Prince William’s Caribbean tour showed a royal family losing its grip on faraway dominions.

In the Bahamas, one group called for slavery reparations.

In Belize, a visit to a cocoa farm was canceled after residents protested.

And during a military parade in Jamaica in March, Prince William, majestic in a white dress uniform, evoked the colonial era when he rode, with his wife, Catherine, in the same open-top Land Rover that carried the queen and Prince Philip in 1962.

Optics are everything when it comes to Royal tours. As Prince Charles and Camilla traveled to Canada on a trip aimed at burnishing the monarchy, they drew some lessons from the recent public relations gaffes of Prince William and his wife, Catherine, on a recent royal tour of the Caribbean.

The trip, during which the Jamaican prime minister declared that his country was “moving on” from the British monarchy while a poker-faced Prince William looked on, underlined just how rapidly Queen Elizabeth II, now 96, is losing a grip on her distant dominions.

Barbados cast off the queen as head of state last November, and Jamaica seems emboldened to follow suit, though it would require a referendum to amend the island’s constitution. William, second in line to the throne, got a taste of how the mood toward the monarchy has changed in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and a renewed call for reparations for Britain’s role in the slave trade.

On many stops of their tour, the couple was greeted warmly, even jubilantly. But even those encounters were marred by off-key images.

In Trench Town, the Kingston neighborhood famous as the home of Bob Marley, the couple tried their hand at reggae and mixed with friendly crowds. But the enduring image of the stop was likely to be them touching the fingers of children stretched through a chain-link fence — the kind of public relations error that afflicts other members of the royal family but has rarely tarnished this couple.

The dissonance is about more than poor stagecraft, according to scholars and royal watchers. Sentiment toward the royal family has shifted perceptibly in the Caribbean since the killings of George Floyd and other Black people by the police in the United States, which inflamed a long-simmering debate in Britain and its former colonies about the legacy of empire. Barbados’s decision to remove the queen was a tipping point.

“Barbados is seen as the conservative of the Caribbean,” said Richard Drayton, a professor of imperial history at King’s College London, who spent his childhood on the island. “So when Barbados takes a step like this, it creates space for other Caribbean countries to move in that direction.”

Elizabeth remains the head of state of 15 countries in the Commonwealth, including Canada. While she is admired in Canada, particularly among the older generation, the younger generation is more skeptical, at a time when their country is grappling with its colonial legacy and its mistreatment of people of color and Indigenous communities.

Philippe Lagassé, an associate professor and an expert on the British monarchy at Carleton University in Ottawa, said that, as in the Caribbean, the prestige and cachet of the monarchy in Canada was waning. But he said that Prince Charles and Camilla would likely have an easier time trying to win over Canadians, since the country did not have a strong and well-organized republican movement, while the system of constitutional monarchy was ingrained.

While the royal couple would have to tread carefully not to expose “fault lines” on sensitive issues such as Quebec nationalism or the colonial legacy of the subjugation of Indigenous peoples, Mr. Lagassé said that he did not foresee widespread anti-royal backlash.

“There isn’t a groundswell of opposition to the monarchy,” he said. “There is also not strong support of an institution that isn’t on top of anyone’s agenda. After all, the royal family is not Canadian.”

— Dan Bilefsky and Mark Landler

Canada’s most British city tries to shrug off its royal past.

VICTORIA, British Columbia — Two of the more high-profile and Instagrammable members of the royal family, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, made global headlines when they decided to withdraw from their royal duties, and made their home in a wealthy, celebrity-filled coastal enclave north of Los Angeles.

But before that, the royal couple spent a brief period in a sleepy municipality near Victoria, British Columbia, on the western edge of Canada.

Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, has long marketed itself as Canada’s most English city. It is peppered with Tudor Revival architecture, pubs with names like “the Churchill” and specialty shops selling marmalade. Until 1950, its police officers wore bobby-style helmets.

It is also where Ken Lane keeps a wax figure of Harry’s great-great-great-great-grandmother perched at a dining room table over a glass of sherry, her hair lovingly shampooed and fluffed by one of her most devoted subjects.

Mr. Lane had kept the wax effigy of Queen Victoria’s head in a box in the basement along with wax figures of other royal and British notables. But after Harry and Megan moved to the area, he decided to move the figure upstairs. He spent three days getting her ready for display, coifing and styling its hair — real human strands imported from Italy.

Wearing a crown, the fabricated queen presided at his dining room table, as if in mid conversation, along with the figures of Queen Elizabeth II; Diana, Princess of Wales; and Winston Churchill. Union Jack napkins were at the ready, and multicolor Skittles for snacking. (After Prince Harry and Meghan left Canada, Mr. Lane put the other figures back in the basement, but Queen Victoria still holds court at the dining room table, albeit alone.)

Mr. Lane had hoped that Harry and Meghan’s decision to retreat from their royal duties and move to Canada would nourish a renewed fascination with the British royals, and that his collection of 350 wax figures would then find a new home. He is still looking, and said on Wednesday that he was trying to sell the collection.

“Meghan and Harry are popular royals, and I feel sorry for what they’ve been through,” said Mr. Lane, past chairman of the Victoria branch of the Monarchist League of Canada , which works to support Canada’s constitutional monarchy.

Mr. Lane is not alone in clinging proudly to the image of his city as a place still closely tied to Britain. Victoria was established as a British trading post in 1843, before it became the seat of British Columbia’s government and a popular destination for retirees and honeymooners.

But increasingly shaped by a wave of new immigrants, a growing high-tech sector and a mayor who refused to pledge the traditional oath of allegiance to the queen , the picturesque city no longer aspires to be a “little piece of Old England.”

Royal Family's Most Memorable Trips: Africa To Canada

From Canada to Africa, these are some of the most notable destinations they have visited.

Canada: The Royal Family has visited Canada on numerous occasions. Queen Elizabeth II made more than 22 trips to Canada, while King Charles has visited 18 times. During their visits, the Royal Family has engaged in various activities, such as fly fishing and horseback riding.

Australia: Another popular destination for the Royal Family. Both Queen Elizabeth II and Charles visited the country on 16 different occasions, most recently in 2018. During their stays, they participated in various activities, such as the Melbourne Cup and the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games.

New Zealand: The two most recent monarchs have also visited here the same number of times, with a total of 10 visits. On their last visit in 2018 they visited the Agrodome Sheep Farm and participated in a Maori ceremony.

Africa: The Royal Family has visited numerous African countries, including Kenya, South Africa and Botswana. Princess Diana visited Angola in 1997 to support the campaign against landmines, while Prince Harry has visited Botswana on several occasions to work on conservation projects.

India: This is where Charles leads the way, having visited the country 10 times when he was a prince, while the Queen visited only three times. In 1980 the present King met Mother Teresa inside the Mother House in Kolkata.

United States: Several royals have dropped by for various reasons, notably Charles has met several political leaders and participated in charitable causes. 

The Royal Family has also visited other impressive destinations, such as the Pacific Islands, the Persian Gulf countries and the Caribbean.

Each of these destinations has left a lasting impression on members of the Royal Family and has been recorded in photographs and videos.

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Photos of British Royal Family's Visits to the U.S. Over the Years

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

The royal family has been visiting the United States for over 80 years now, touching lives in states across the nation along the way. While official tours—and even impromptu visits—come with a range of important duties, they typically also allow for public-facing moments of downtime and celebrity-studded fun. From King George VI and the future Queen Mother's very first hot dog to Prince Charles's date with Tricia Nixon , these photos show just how many memories have been made in the United States. With Prince William visiting in New York City this week for the Earthshot Prize Summit, there's no better time to look back at the best royal visits to the U.S. throughout history.

King George VI and the future Queen Mother were the very first British royals to travel to the U.S. in 1939. Here, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the royals zip down the streets of New York on the way to the Commander-in-Chief's Top Cottage retreat.

The King and Queen sail aboard the presidential yacht to Mount Vernon, New York. During a picnic with the President and First Lady, they both tried a hot dog for the very first time!

Here, King George VI and the future Queen Mother stand on the Capitol steps with senators from around the country.

Then-Princess Elizabeth made her first trip to the U.S. in 1951, where she met with President Harry Truman. “Whenever anyone becomes acquainted with you,” he told her at the time, “they immediately fall in love.”

Queen Elizabeth returned six years later for her first state visit as monarch. She appeared to enjoy her first and only college football game in Maryland, where she famously asked , "Where do you get all those enormous players?"

The Queen and Prince Philip tour one of the ships at Jamestown Festival Park's pier during a stop in Virginia.

On a state visit in 1959, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip ride an electric car through the International Chicago Trade Fair.

Princess Margaret and her husband Antony Armstrong-Jones ride one of San Francisco's famous cable cars on their trip to sunny California in November 1965.

Margaret takes in the view from atop the city's iconic Coit Tower.

During a stop in Hollywood, the royals visit Alfred Hitchcock on set of his film Torn Curtain .

Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon take riding lessons at the Arizona ranch of former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, Lewis Douglas.

The pair stop in Washington, D.C. toward the end of their trip to take in sights like the Lincoln Memorial.

During his first visit to the States as Prince of Wales, Prince Charles gets cozy with President Richard Nixon's daughter, Tricia, at a baseball game. “That was quite amusing, I must say,” he later told CNN of the trip. “That was the time when they were trying to marry me off to Tricia Nixon.”

Princess Anne joins her brother on the White House balcony, alongside President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon.

Queen Elizabeth dances with President Gerald Ford at a White House State Dinner during her 1976 East Coast visit.

Queen Elizabeth drops by Philadelphia’s famous Liberty Bell.

The monarch waves at onlookers as she passes the iconic Bloomingdale's flagship store in New York City.

Prince Charles returned to America in 1977, where he toured the McDonnell Douglas plant in St. Louis. Here, founder James S. McDonnell shows off a F-15 Eagle jet fighter.

The future king makes a stop in California, where he visits the set of M*A*S*H. The actors, including Alan Alda, share a laugh with the royal over an inflated surgical glove.

Prince Charles continues to mingle with Hollywood stars—like Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors—at a banquet held in his honor at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

While in Downey, California, Queen Elizabeth receives a tour of both the Apollo 14 and Space Shuttle models at the Rockwell International Space Facility.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana chat with President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan inside the West Sitting Hall of the White House.

At a dinner in Cross Hall at the White House, Princess Diana shares a now-famous dance with John Travolta. First Lady Nancy Reagan actually helped the two of them meet. "Oh yes you can," Reagan told Travolta when he expressed that he "couldn't possibly" ask the royal to dance.

During a polo match in Palm Beach, Florida, Princess Diana hands out prizes to the participants—including her husband.

Four years later, Princess Di made her first official trip overseas without Prince Charles. After arriving in New York City, she visits the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side, a nonprofit providing resources and services to residents in need.

In what eventually became known as the "talking hat" speech , Queen Elizabeth famously presents President George H. W. Bush with the Winston Churchill Award from behind a podium that was too tall for her 5'4" frame.

The monarch makes Congress laugh two days later by joking , "I do hope you can see me today."

Shortly after her divorce, Lady Di travelled back to the United States for a fundraising event for the Nina Hyde Center for Breast Cancer Research. She is seen laughing with Washington Post owner Katharine Graham, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, designer Ralph Lauren, and Georgetown University President Leo J. O'Donovan.

Here, Diana visits what's now known as the John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago.

A few months later, Diana returns to the Big Apple for the Met Gala , wearing this now-iconic Versace gown and statement jewelry.

Prince Edward accepts the Bette Davis Special Achievement Award at Boston University for his work in documentary filmmaking.

Princess Anne is presented with a collection of historic seeds to celebrate the opening of Manhattan's British Royal Garden.

Queen Elizabeth eagerly points something out to Prince Philip while watching the Kentucky Derby. With her love of both fashionable hats and horses , she fit right in at the event.

The Duchess of Cornwall gets a close-up view of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia that same year.

A whopping 53 years after her first United Nations address, Queen Elizabeth makes her return in 2010 in New. York. "It is my hope that when judged by future generations, our sincerity, our willingness to take a lead and our determination to do the right thing will stand the test of time," she said at the time.

Later that day, the monarch lays a wreath at the site of the World Trade Center. It was the first time she visited Ground Zero since the September 11th terrorist attacks nine years earlier.

Prince William and Kate Middleton make a trip of their own the following year. Here, they giggle through a painting class held at Inner City Arts in Los Angeles.

The newlyweds share a kiss following William's participation in the Foundation Polo Challenge in Santa Barbara.

While attending the BAFTA Brits to Watch event, they mingle with stars like Jennifer Lopez.

William and Kate shake hands with Hillary and Chelsea Clinton during a reception in New York City.

While in town, the couple stop by Brooklyn's Barclays Center to take in a basketball game. They were seen sharing popcorn...

Appearing on the jumbotron...

Chatting it up with Jay-Z and Beyoncé...

And even receiving some gifts from LeBron James!

Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall speak with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in the Oval Office in the White House.

Meghan Markle cheers on close friend Serena Williams at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York. She's sitting with the tennis star's family and friends, like Venus Williams and Anna Wintour.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle share an intimate moment before he gives a keynote address to the United Nations in New York City.

In December 2022 Prince William met with President Joe Biden at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston while in town to announce the awards for the second annual Earthshot Prize .

As part of his September trip to New York City, Prince William paid a visit to Governors Island to learn about the Billion Oyster Project and meet students from the New York Harbor School. William was in the city for The Earthshot Prize Summit 2023 ahead of the Awards Ceremony in Singapore in November .

William also undertook a series of meetings, including one with President Lasso Mendoza of Ecuador at the Consul General Official Residence at United Nations, which happened to be decorated with an image of William's late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.

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King Charles to Open Parts of Queen Elizabeth’s Beloved Balmoral Castle, Buckingham Palace to the Public

By Kase Wickman

This summer, royal enthusiasts will be able to set foot inside rooms of two iconic royal residences for the first time ever. The royal family will make internal tours of Scotland's Balmoral Castle, as well as the East Wing of Buckingham Palace, available to the public in July and August. 

Balmoral Castle , in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, was known to be the late Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite place to spend time. It’s also where she spent her final days and died in 2022 . Beginning this summer, the public will be allowed to explore parts of the royal residence for the first time ever since its completion in 1855.

The royal family usually spends large parts of their summers at Balmoral, a tradition that has continued into the reign of King Charles III . Last summer, the bulk of the royal family, with the exception of the estranged Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle , gathered at the castle .

This week, royal websites were updated with tickets for guided tours of the castle, which had previously only been offered on select dates for the grounds and the ballroom. The intimate tours, which were limited to 10 attendees per group and were only available on dates in July and early August, quickly sold out.

The royal estate in the Scottish Highlands is a touchstone for the family, and the site not only of family gatherings and the longest-sitting monarch’s death, but other milestone memories as well. In a recently resurfaced clip of Prince William giving a speech in Scotland in 2021 , he recalled being at Balmoral when he found out that his mother, Princess Diana, had died.

“Still in shock, I found sanctuary in the service at Crathie Kirk that very morning,” he said. “And in the dark days of grief that followed, I found comfort and solace in the Scottish outdoors. As a result, the connection I feel to Scotland will forever run deep.”

The castle and its land were first purchased by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1852 when they promptly began construction to expand and modernize the previously too-small estate they had fallen in love with. Notably, Queen Elizabeth herself was proposed to by Prince Philip on the 50,000 acres of what Victoria once called “my dear paradise in the Highlands.”

The rooms of Balmoral aren’t the only royal spaces to be made newly available to guests. On Wednesday, the Royal Trust announced that Buckingham Palace’s East Wing would also be opened for the first time this summer, following its five-year renovation. This will be the first time that the public will be able to visit the room leading out to the central balcony that has been the setting for so many milestones for the royal family, including the traditional appearance greeting the public at the summer Trooping the Colour festivities.

Certain rooms of Buckingham Palace have been opened in the summer for guided tours since 1992 when Queen Elizabeth began the offering as a fundraiser following a fire in the royal residence, but this is the first time in the castle’s history that these rooms will be available for public viewing.

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Princess Anne gives sailboat a royal sendoff from yacht club

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Even though he was about to set off on an 18-month sailing trip, Bill Norrie dressed up in a suit on Sunday. 

He was standing with his wife, Cathy, in their sailboat, which was moored at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, where Princess Anne was set to present prizes at the Spring Dinghies Regatta. 

He hoped the princess would give him the honour of a royal send-off. 

He got his wish. 

After touring the Canadian Navy’s Osprey sail training vessel, Princess Anne and her entourage stopped for a brief chat with the couple. 

Upon learning of Norrie’s plans to head off to New Zealand, the princess joked: “You’re looking too tidy for that.” 

Sir Tim Laurence, Princess Anne’s husband, untied the boat from the dock, and the princess gave the 28-foot-long Pixie a push before strolling back toward land to hand out the regatta prizes. 

The club’s vice-commodore, Dale Gann, said Princess Anne was interested in the club’s youth sailing program and knowledgeable about local sailing conditions. 

“She was very attuned to the weather and the difficulty that was on the water for some of the young sailors today,” Gann said. “It’s so nice to walk and talk to her about the youth.” 

Adair Nadeau, who gave the princess flowers while she was on the dock, was enchanted by the royal visit. 

“I’ve never seen a real-life princess,” the 12-year-old said with a smile. 

Earlier in the day, Princess Anne unveiled a plaque honouring her late mother, Queen Elizabeth, and saluted Canadian veterans and current Armed Forces members during separate ceremonies in Victoria. 

She planted a red flowering currant tree and unveiled the plaque at Government House, where she walked around the gardens, said Patty Grant, president of the Friends of Government House Garden. “It was lovely. She is so personable and showed an interest in each and every one of the volunteers.” 

Princess Anne was especially interested in the Garry oak woodlands area and took photos, said Valerie Murray, Government House’s horticultural adviser. “The camas is looking fantastic right now and we were able to talk about the unique Garry oak ecosystem.” 

Murray said the princess was shown a new pathway developed in honour of her brother, King Charles. 

The princess also laid a wreath during a ceremony at the B.C. legislature cenotaph to commemorate the Battle of the Atlantic, the largest and longest battle of the Second World War, during which Canada lost 24 warships and more than 4,300 Canadian forces and merchant marine members. 

About 600 people attended the Battle of Atlantic ceremony, B.C. legislature security staff estimated. 

Princess Anne’s royal visit started Friday in North Vancouver, where she participated in the commissioning of HMCS Max Bernays, the first Arctic patrol vessel for Canada’s Pacific fleet. 

The princess, honorary commodore-in-chief of the Pacific fleet, sailed on board HMCS Max Bernays to Esquimalt . She then visited God’s Acre veterans cemetery and an urban agricultural sustainable food project. 

Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee, commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, said having the princess attend the Battle of the Atlantic ceremony and sail on board a patrol vessel was an honour for Canada’s navy. 

“It does make it extra special for the sailors of the Canadian Pacific fleet,” he said. “She is the honorary commodore-in-chief of the Pacific fleet, and for her to have a chance to come out and meet the sailors, sail on board HMCS Max Bernays and to be here to commission [the vessel] is a big moment for us. She cares deeply about her royal duties and the sailors in the Royal Canadian Navy.” 

HMCS Max Bernays is the first new ship commissioned on the West Coast for Arctic and offshore patrols based in Victoria, Topshee said. 

“It’s a great new capability for Canada and it guarantees that we can ensure our Arctic sovereignty,” he said. 

Princess Anne’s final visit of the day was at the Victoria Therapeutic Riding Association in Central Saanich. 

Forgoing a pavilion that had been set aside for her visit, the princess watched riding demonstrations from the side of the gate. 

While she was there, the accomplished equestrian, who competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, chatted with members of the riding association. 

The princess headed back to London on Sunday night. 

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King Charles Takes On Hundreds Of New Patronages From The Late Queen Elizabeth

King Charles is taking on hundreds of new patronages from the late Queen Elizabeth following a significant review of the charities supported by the royal family.

However, he could not prevent at least 200 organizations from losing their royal association due to the shortage of working royals.

The King Is A New Patron Of One Of Meghan Markle’s Former Charities

King Charles has also become a patron of one of Meghan Markle ‘s former charities, The Association of Commonwealth Universities.

In March 2020, Meghan met with representatives from the charity and in private at Buckingham Palace to complete her final solo engagement as a working royal, and she invited some journalists, including Meghan’s mouthpiece, author Omid Scobie.

As the engagement got underway, Scobie said that the Duchess of Sussex whispered in his ear, “It didn’t have to be this way.”

The Queen became The Association of Commonwealth Universities’ first Patron in 1986. There was even a scholarship named after her, called the Queen Elizabeth Commonwealth Scholarship.

Queen Elizabeth was a patron of 492 organizations until the day she passed on September 8th, 2022.  King Charles now has 669 patronages, and earlier today, the King determined which charities would still retain their royal association.

Royal links are desirable for these organizations because they enhance their profile, fundraising ability, and being endorsed by the royal family.

The patronages that won’t make the cut will receive a letter in the next few days saying they have lost their royal links.

Buckingham Palace sources claim that they kept as many organizations as possible . Seventy-four charities lost their royal affiliation.

Hundreds of charities were in limbo, not knowing their fate, as Charles and Camilla put them on hold until they determined the review’s outcome.

They clarified that “the process of pruning had been very careful and very controlled” to ensure no more royal patronages were lost than absolutely necessary.” The royal family kept a lot more charities than they thought they would be able to.

The King Wanted To Keep Certain Organizations

The King mainly wanted to keep those organizations involved in developing and preserving communities, conservation, and culture. Generally, the chosen charities were those the King has a vested interest in.

Charles took on Wildlife Trusts, The Samaritans, and the Heritage Crafts Organization. Wildlife Trusts protect the natural habitats and the animals that live there.

The Samaritans help people with mental health issues who may be contemplating suicide. It offers support groups for family or friends who had someone close to them commit suicide, and it provides emotional support to those in need.

The Heritage Crafts Organization promotes and supports traditional crafts. It aims to advance public knowledge and education about traditional and heritage crafts.

He has also retained the Royal British Legion . This charity gives financial, social, and emotional support to the members and veterans of the British Armed Forces and their families.

It is unknown how many charities Kate Middleton and Prince William will participate in . They have vowed to handle things differently from other royals and only focus on a small number of important charities so they can enact change for those organizations.

Let us know your thoughts about the king decreasing the charities he patronizes. See the comment selection below. For any other soap opera and entertainment news, please visit again  Daily Soap Dish,

Jennifer graduated high school with honors, went to Delaware Community College, and earned an AA degree in Communications and Journalism. When not writing for Daily Soap Dish, she has a pet website at www.pawsomepets.info. Jennie also authors articles for veterinarian offices. She volunteers at a cat rescue called Cat Angel Network and has two beautiful Ragdoll cats named Columbus and Sassafras. Jennie adores General Hospital and loves to write spoilers and predict what characters will do next. She has been watching GH since the days of Sonny and Brenda in the ninety’s and watches it faithfully to this day. She is happiest when she is writing and creating.

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Behind the ancient coronation traditions as King Charles is blessed, anointed and crowned

LONDON — While King Charles III , 74, has ruled since his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in September, on Saturday he was crowned monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, also becoming the largely ceremonial head of the Commonwealth .  

The U.K. is the only country in Europe to hold a lavish coronation ceremony — other countries, such as France , have abolished the monarchy, opted for a more simple affair, like Norway, or have never had coronations, such as the Netherlands.

It was the 40th coronation at Westminster Abbey, a tradition dating to 1066. Charles’ wife, Camilla , previously known as the queen consort, officially became queen.

Elizabeth , who died at age 96, sat on the throne for a record 70 years. She was 27 when she was crowned in 1953 — an era-defining moment shown on the still-new medium of television for the first time. In contrast, Charles is a veteran royal who has traveled around the world many times representing the country.

Here’s everything that happened on the day:

Procession to Westminster Abbey

Public viewing areas along the route were open from 6 a.m. (1 a.m. ET). Space was limited, as many streets in and around the abbey were closed to traffic.

Early Saturday, the military units involved in planning and executing the event arrived at Waterloo Station and then moved across the city to help marshal the thousands of onlookers.

In the morning, the procession travelled from Buckingham Palace to the abbey in a journey lasting around 35 minutes. Charles and Camilla were in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, first used by Elizabeth in 2014 . The air-conditioned carriage, which weighs 3 metric tonnes (a little over 6,600 pounds) was pulled by six Windsor Grey horses, and is only ever used by the sovereign, occasionally alongside a visiting head of state.

Follow coronation ceremony live updates here

The gilded crown on the carriage roof was carved from oak from HMS Victory — Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 — and a piece of the mathematician Isaac Newton’s apple tree inscribed with his initials.

The service

The two-hour service began at 11 a.m. (7 a.m. ET). It was a somber and symbolic ceremony, largely unchanged in a millennium, in which Charles took on the role of sovereign.

The traditional Anglican anthem “ I Was Glad ” was sung as he entered, a piece based on Psalm 122 that has been used at this moment in coronations since at least 1626.

The coronation was presided over by Justin Welby , the archbishop of Canterbury , whose role has remained unchanged since 1066. 

Welby delivered a liturgy , or sermon, in which he invited the millions of Britons watching to “make their homage, in heart and voice, to their undoubted King, defender of all.” 

The service for the first time included languages from around the U.K., including a prayer in Welsh and a hymn sung in Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic. 

Two thousand guests packed the abbey, including first lady Jill Biden and Prince Harry , Charles’ younger son, who has an acrimonious relationship with his father and elder brother, Prince William , and the royal establishment. 

Charles was the 10th monarch to be crowned since America declared independence in 1776. No U.S. president has ever attended a British coronation, a tradition that continues.

The recognition and oath

After he entered the abbey, Welby called for recognition of the sovereign by the people — assembled dignitaries and senior royal household staff members then acclaim the king, pledging their homage, or loyalty.

Charles then took the coronation oath, a legal requirement since a law passed in 1689 compelled King William and Queen Mary to promise to maintain the Protestant faith. The same year, Parliament passed a law that bans any Catholic from taking the throne — a rule still in effect.

At Elizabeth’s coronation, the archbishop asked her whether she would govern the people of the U.K and the Commonwealth and uphold the Anglican faith. “All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God,” she replied.

The anointing

Then Charles was anointed, blessed and consecrated by Welby as he sat in the coronation chair, a relic first used in the coronation of King Edward II in 1308.

The process of anointing is inspired by the biblical anointing of King Solomon — it is a deeply religious moment, similar to a baptism. The oil was made with olives harvested from two groves from monasteries on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, where the Bible says Jesus prayed the day before his crucifixion.

But the moment was hidden from the millions watching around the world by a screen: Tradition holds that the only witnesses will be the king, the archbishop and God.

Charles took off his crimson robes and any jewelry and wore just a simple robe as the archbishop poured oil on his head, hands and chest. As he did this, Welby said: “So be you anointed, blessed and consecrated King over the Peoples, whom the Lord thy God hath given thee to rule and govern.”

Handel’s anthem “Zadok the Priest” played during the ancient ritual. Shakespeare referred to the symbolism of the process in “Richard II”: “Not all the water in the rough rude sea/Can wash the balm off from an anointed king.”

Not all monarchs revered it, however: Elizabeth I referred to the sacred oil as “grease” that “smelt ill,” according to George Gross , a theologian at King’s College London.

After Charles received the crown jewels, the orb and two scepters, Welby placed the St. Edward’s Crown on his head. The crown features a 4.9-pound solid gold frame complete with rubies, amethysts, sapphires, garnets, topazes and tourmaline gemstones. It was worn by Elizabeth during her coronation and has been refitted for her son.

At the end of the ceremony, Charles switched to the lighter Imperial State Crown for the procession back to the palace.

Gun salutes were fired from across Britain both at land and sea.

The reception

After the service, the procession took the king and queen back to Buckingham Palace in a different ceremonial carriage, the Gold State Coach, on the same route around Central London that Elizabeth’s body was taken during her funeral last year. 

Some 5,000 armed forces personnel from across Britain and the Commonwealth accompany the newly crowned king and queen. A further 1,200 members of the British armed forces will line the route, according to plans shared by Buckingham Palace and the British government.

The Gold State Coach, commissioned in 1760, was first used by George III to travel to the state opening of Parliament two years later. It weighs 4 metric tonnes (almost 9,000 pounds) and needs eight Windsor Grey horses to pull it, and it can manage no more than a walking pace.

Elizabeth used it on her coronation day in 1953. On that unseasonably cold June day, royal staff members strapped a hot water bottle under her seat. Queen Victoria, her great-great-grandmother, was not fond of the gold coach and did not use it in seven state openings of Parliament, the Royal Collection Trust said .

The balcony moment and flypast

Charles and Camilla headed to the Buckingham Palace garden for a reception.

They then appeared on the famous palace balcony alongside their pages of honor and other senior royals — including the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Catherine and Princes George and Louis and Princess Charlotte.

The final crescendo of the day’s pomp and circumstance was the six-minute flypast of more than 60 aircraft from the Royal Air Force, the British army and the Royal Navy, followed by the Royal Air Force’s aerobatics team, the Red Arrows.

Among the aircraft were planes that have delivered aid to Ukraine and policed NATO airspace, as well as Spitfires, the famous planes that flew in the Battle of Britain in 1940.

Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter for NBC News Digital.

Max Taylor is a senior desk editor for NBC News, based in London.