The Crown & Us

On the occasion of her Platinum Jubilee, a reflection on Queen Elizabeth's relationship to Canada

- Gary Stephen Ross

She was everywhere, back then. Gazing serenely from the wall of the principal's office as I awaited my fate. The Unitarian Church, where the minister strummed his guitar. The drill hall where, in ill-fitting cadet uniforms, we shouldered wooden rifles and sang the national anthem-a plea for God to save her. Queen Elizabeth II was in every Canadian community centre and government office, the liquor stores and union quarters of my father, the hockey arenas and pool halls of my youth.

And there she remains, neatly framed, on the walls of my memory, wearing the priceless tiara, necklace, bracelets, earrings, and the striking blue sash signalling her place atop the Most Venerable Order of the Garter. In the photograph she is young and beautiful, so it must have been taken soon after she ascended the throne in 1952, at age 25, following the sudden death of her father, King George VI.

Royalty was still the stuff of fairy tales back then, of princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, curtsies and posies, shy children performing charming dances in exotic places, LIFE magazine photo specials, breathless live coverage of royal visits. For the second half of the 20th century, with her husband and third cousin, the Duke of Edinburgh, by her side, Elizabeth performed her ancestral role expertly and indefatigably, a life of public service that would exhaust most mortals. Her respites were her stables, her corgis, her growing family, and Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Surveys still put her among the most admired figures in the world.