Americans love hot dogs, but most couldn't (or wouldn't want) to tell you what's in them. Americans love listening to rap music, but many probably can't relate to struggles of gang violence and urban poverty, nor excessive wealth and fame. Americans are quite particular about what car they drive, but nobody except your local enthusiast (or maybe your Uncle Jim) could tell you much about how they work.
For generations, Americans have had an obsession with the British Royal Family, and the institutions of monarchy in general, even though it is, er, not our form of government, nor does anything they do really affect us in any way.
In my brief journey from the U.S. to Canada, I've had people flip their lid over hearing the letter 'Z' pronounced 'Zed' instead of 'Zee,' watched complete meltdowns over me having a postal code instead of a ZIP code, and seen oddly visceral reactions to the Metric system.
Similarly, Canada's system of government evokes feelings of everything from wonderment to consternation when presented to Americans.
"Canada has a queen?"
"Yeah."
"Well, who is it?"
"Umm...Elizabeth? ...The same one as the UK?"
"So Canada is part of the UK?"
"Well, no."
"But it's the same government?"
"Well Canada just still sort of recognizes the queen because they used to be a colony. You know, like us."
"So they have a monarchy instead of a democracy then?"
"Well, they have both."
"But monarchy means the queen is in charge."
"Well, you know, she is but.."
"But they have a president, too?"
There are a lot of resources you can use to learn about how the Canadian government works, so I won't bore you with the finer details of that. Instead, today I want to share some of my personal thoughts and feelings about the institution of monarchy in Canada, in wake of the passing Elizabeth II, the beloved monarch of the past seven decades. There are a few reasons for doing so: 1) because people I know continue to have misunderstandings about the role the monarchy plays in Canada, and 2) because they keep asking me about it, but also because 3) I feel like a lot of this comes from the fact that it's not spoken about enough. Even in Canadian media, opinions on the British monarchy bubble up every now and then, but for the most part, it says out of public discourse. Even politicians stay away from it, disregarding public polls (which suggest Canadians wish to abolish the monarchy) and saying something to the tune of "now is not the time to talk about it," and "it's too complicated to do anything about."
Before the move
It didn't take long for me to use all the resources at my disposal as a seven-year-old (a primitive version of Google and school library books) to find that the British monarchy isn't what young Americans are often told it is. Rather, the role of British monarchs is indeed extremely limited and mostly ceremonial. I don't mean to insult anyone's intelligence by explaining what you may think is the obvious, but I have had some very bright people in my day come up to me and make some alarming assumptions about the monarchy.
This might be at least partly because there are some things that are still on the books that monarchs are technically allowed to do, but in practice would simply never happen. This was the hard part for me and a lot of my peers--you see, America is a litigious place: if something is put in writing in America, that means it could happen, and/or that it's only a matter of time until it will. And if something happens, that means there's lawsuits, affidavits, motions, injunctions, and hearings to follow. If you've lived through the Trump era in America, you know that anything anybody does in the government causes a chain reaction of legal consequences. So I think it is understandably strange to us when we hear "well the Queen theoretically could dissolve Parliament, but she wouldn't." Who is that sane?
But the point is, sanity doesn't seem to matter in the tradition of this institution. Americans often focus on the person that is the monarch, rather than the monarchy itself and its role in the United Kingdom. The will of the citizenry of the United Kingdom is the piece that is so often underestimated, or simply forgotten about by non-Britons. In the Middle Ages, the dynamics of society were such that they permitted the king or queen to "off with their heads" anybody they saw fit, and the promise of things like fairness, protection, and land kept the loyal subjects in check. But today, British society exists completely outside of those types of confines. Nothing the average Briton does (living, working, eating marmalade sandwiches), really fits the bill of something that one aristocratic family needs to, or would behoove them to, have a stake in. For that we have things like the military and civil defense, markets, elected officials, and private property. Britons don't live in fear or intimidation of the Royal family; rather, they simply live alongside it, and the natural way of things serves as their checks and balance, if the English Constitution doesn't already. Imagine the public outcry and scorn there would be if the king decided to do something off-the-cuff or uncouth; the backlash would be so unbearable the Royal Family would go into hiding before they dared send their guards out with bayonets.
And so, before I moved, I looked across the pond with the same curiosity and envy as other Americans, but with some context: "Well she's just a harmless little old lady. Let her do what she wants!"
After the move
Coming to Canada and seeing how they use the British monarchy is kind of like getting married but your spouse has but built a shrine to their ex's mother everywhere.
But in all seriousness, it's a little different for me because I did not move to the UK, nor have I even ever been there. Surely, the way that the monarchy is viewed there is something that I could not understand without at least spending some time there, and I feel a bit irresponsible even discussing it. But of course, I can discuss the monarchy in Canada. And here's where it gets weird.
So, without going into too much detail, Canada is one of several countries (I use Australia in the example) who are part of the Commonwealth of Nations, a relic of the old British Empire which basically loosely joins countries that used to be British colonies in an alliance or friendship of sorts.
These countries are not politically connected to each other, nor are they connected to the UK anymore. However, it just so happens that several (but not all) of these countries kept the British Royal family as their head of state or sovereign, a complicated thing that I won't go too much into but think of it as the personification of a country. Technically, the head of state of the United States is the president, but I like to think of a head of state as usually being something bigger than a president--somebody who is not just in charge of the government, but would be the person who represents your country in, er, everything. A person who sort of ceremonially exemplifies the values and culture and traditions of your country.
In countries like the United States, which are republics, an elected official is usually both the head of government AND the head of state. But in the Commonwealth, the head of state and the head of government are separate. The head of government is still elected (a prime minister), but the head of state is--you guessed it--Charles III.
For my Americans reading this, you might be thinking "this sounds made up and stupid." And here's the thing: it is! It is all seriously just made up, and really only exists just because nobody has gotten around to getting rid of it yet, and for that reason, I just have a very hard time taking it seriously. It's all so genuinely silly to me!
A younger me, who grew up in a small town, always had an envy for luxury, pageantry, and "officialness." But to me, those things only come about by being earned. People consider George Washington a hero, for example, not just because he was a rich old guy, but because he led a bunch of redneck farmers to defeat the world's most powerful military during his lifetime. Conversely, Queen Victoria, who is heralded as one of Great Britain's best monarchs, was just kind of...there her whole life, no offense. We love to make movies and TV shows and monuments and artwork dedicated to monarchs who just lucked into their position by being born into rich families. I find it kind of antithetical to my values to worship that kind of thing.
I'm in a Facebook group for Americans who have moved to Canada, and a few months ago, I came across a post from a lady who was a little distraught because she was about to go to her Canadian citizenship ceremony, but realized that in taking her oath, she had to pledge her allegiance to the Queen. She had no personal problems with Elizabeth II, nor was she necessarily infatuated with all the things modern America has come to represent, but it was really the principle of pledging her loyalty to, well frankly, some random old lady, that didn't sit right with her. She got a lot of hate from our fellow group members, who accused her of drinking too much American Kool-Aid and taking herself too seriously, but I was on her side.
America is not a perfect place. As kids, Americans are taught that it is, and it takes a lot to undo exceptionalist brainwashing. But there are just some things that are hardwired into us, to me, that regardless of how you feel about politics or world affairs will always be there. One of those things is that "rebellious streak" you may have heard about. American values are, quite literally, borne out of a disdain for authority: think "Don't Tread on Me." And so, it naturally follows that we have reservations about an institution whose authority, real in practice or not, is vested in one person who lives in another country. A person, who to remind you, does nothing for themselves and lives on a pension funded by average people. A person, who does things like this:
So as King of Canada, Charles has a lot of responsibility to the Canadian people in what he says and does, just as his mother did before him. And yet, he doesn't live here. His visits are not regular, or even frequent. But even if they were, even if he had been to Canada more than seventeen times (that's the real number of visits), is that doing a country and its people justice? I mean, if you're going to have a king, shouldn't it at least be somebody who lives in your country? Who has that country's best interest at heart and issues in mind rather than some other country's?
There is a lot of literature on what sorts of things make up a "Canadian identity," or rather, why the country has a lack thereof. What I mean by that is: a lot of professors write a bunch of books and articles about how Canada has really not succeeded as a country in its brief history, because it basically splits its culture by importing things from Great Britain, France, and the United States, instead of making a name for itself on the world stage. I think there are varying levels of truth to this, which we will pull apart on the blog, but I bring this up because having a whole other country be your head of state isn't really helping your case, Canada. The few people in Canada who are vehemently pro-monarchy (strangely enough, that is a thing) argue the opposite--that by breaking its last colonial tie to the mother country, Canada would be all alone and get swallowed up by the big, bad USA. It's a "slippery slope" argument. After all, the United States has tried to invade Canada a few times over the past 250 years.
This really is a minority opinion, though. The numbers are out on what Canadians think of having a monarchy, and they don't look good. There are polls conducted nearly every year to collect public opinion on such issues. The 2022 edition suggests that over half of Canadians want to ditch the monarchy, even though pretty much no prime minister of the past twenty years has agreed to take up the issue on the ballot, or even acknowledged the overall trend of these polls, which suggest that fewer and fewer Canadians have the desire to hang onto the crown.
This brings me to my third point, related to the first two, which is that Canadians don't want (or need) the monarchy. Now, I haven't conducted an official poll or taken some cross-section of society here, but from the many people I've talked to, I gather that people, at least not in Ontario and especially not in Quebec, really don't seem to learn much about the queen in school, nor are they really raised with the monarchy framed in their mind in the way that somebody would be in the UK. The most people have ever had to to say about the queen around here is that she's on the money, or that she visited their hometown one time in the '60s, or that she was a sweet old lady. You see, the queen is everywhere: on the money, on road names, on the covers of tabloids, in framed portraits at the DMV--everywhere, except where it matters most: in people's consciousness.
If the queen does exist in a person's consciousness, it's probably for a bad reason. The institution of monarchy has caused generations of hurt around the world, thanks to colonialism. In Canada especially, we are just now, after hundreds of years, reckoning with the havoc the British monarchy has wreaked on French people, indigenous people, and immigrants. The queen and now the king, being extremely wealthy, influential, and powerful people, and being "in charge" of the country, share some responsibility in righting the wrongs of the past, which is something that simply did not happen over the past seven decades, and I'm not optimistic that it will in the next seven. I appreciate history as much as the next guy and can understand the historical importance of the monarchy, but this is a part of history that is better left in museums and should be moved on from, no?
Final thoughts
To people who have never been to Canada, I often describe it to them as an alien coming to Earth and being given a blueprint of America, and then being asked to recreate it. It's so similar to the U.S. in so many ways, yet in the ways you'd expect things to be the same, they're different, and vice versa.
But by and large, if you take the maple leaf logo off everything and cross out the French translation, strip it all down to its core and Canada is remarkably similar to the United States, in more ways than Canadians would like to admit. The layout of the cities and roads, the architecture of the buildings, the culture of consumerism, the media, it's all distinctly North American, and decidedly not British.
There's a reason Toronto is used as a double for New York City in movies and TV shows, but not London. The landscape, the patterns of speaking, the food, the weather, the approach to social situations in Great Britain are simply unrecognizable to most Canadians. Even though I haven't been here that long, that's the biggest takeaway for me: it feels odd and ingenuine to be watched over by a person and a country so different from, and indifferent to, us. Not that I have any issues with the British (oh, what I would give to see Ed Sheeran and Coldplay perform at Wembley), but they're just not us and we're not them. I would liken it to [pick a country, any country] saying, "we love Joe Biden and we're gonna put him on our money." Sure, he's not the president of...the Philippines, nor has he ever been there, nor do the people there really have much in common with us, but the US once tried to colonize them so now they follow our lead. Cool, I guess? Or not cool, rather.
We live in a modern world where problems are best solved by electing people based on their merits to act in our best interest to solve them. Sure, it's easier said than done, but at least in theory it makes more sense than trying to justify a monarchy, no matter how watered down it is. Canada has done fine for itself so far, becoming a middle power and one of the wealthiest nations in the world in just a century and a half, but who's to say what potential we have by embracing our own identity for once instead of somebody else's? Maybe we'd have more 'identity' after all?
Canadians: what do you think about the monarchy in this country? Why? Am I just blowing smoke about something that doesn't matter, or do you think abolishing it would make a real difference? Americans: do you think the end result of being a republic is that much different than having a constitutional monarchy? How do you think America would be different if we had a history of kings and queens?