Monarchy?

[Edward Campbell]

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To slighty correct one of the previous posts concerning the Royal Family being Britains envoy to America. In most cases, when the Queen visits the US, she is going as Queen and representative of Canada.
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I do not claim to be a Royal watcher but I cannot recall seeing many maple leaf flags on display when HM or one of her children visit the USA. One normally, I think sees the union jack which is that national flag of the UK. Normally, when HM visits foreign, non-commonwealth, countries, she does so as t5he official representative of the UK. Australia and Canada are not asked to help pay the freight and she does not stand in front of an array of old commonwealth flags.

Looks a whole lot like the Queen of Canada wasn't visiting Washington - either that our our Yank neighbours are, suddenly and shockingly, poor at protocol.

 

[Old Sweat]

The status of the Monarch, as the King of Canada, as opposed to the United Kingdom et al, caused a bit of a constitutional flap in September 1939. As you are aware, Canada delayed declaring war against Germany until Parliament could debate and vote on the matter. Thus, while we had mobilized on 1 September 1939, we did not declare war until 10 September. In the meantime the UK had declared war on 3 September, and Australia and New Zealand, along with the Empire, automatically went to war on that date because neither Dominion had implemented the 1931 Statutes of Westminster, unlike Canada and South Africa. Thus, when Canada declared war, there were those who found constitutional hurdles as HM had already declared war, and they argued he could not do so again. Most of these, of course, were not in the Great White North.

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

She put into example the rule of King George Bush the 2nd. The people didn't want him elected the second time around, they were afraid to impeach him over fears of Martial Law.

50.7% wanted him.  Give me a break.  I don't know that we could offer Americans useful democracy lessons.  They figured it out all by themselves.

 

[Mudshuvel]

I do not claim to be a Royal watcher but I cannot recall seeing many maple leaf flags on display when HM or one of her children visit the USA. One normally, I think sees the union jack which is that national flag of the UK. Normally, when HM visits foreign, non-commonwealth, countries, she does so as t5he official representative of the UK. Australia and Canada are not asked to help pay the freight and she does not stand in front of an array of old commonwealth flags.


Looks a whole lot like the Queen of Canada wasn't visiting Washington - either that our our Yank neighbours are, suddenly and shockingly, poor at protocol.

Sorry E.R., I had actually misread something that stated that. What I had read was "in various trips to the US, she often is recieved as Queen of Canada if coming directly from Canada, or Queen of the UK if coming directly from the UK."

I'll take the flak for that one.

 

[Kirkhill]

Mudshuvel raises an interesting point though -

Has HM ever been received in the United States as Head of the Commonwealth?

Corollaries:

Would the US ever receive her as such?
What would be the flag protocol?  The Commowealth Flag, Her personal banner or the collected national flags of the Commonwealth?

The reason I ask if the US would ever receive her as such is that it might be a bit of a surprise to some Americans that there remains a collective entity associated with the Crown that:

can claim to represent some 2 Billion people, or 1/3 of the planet;
all of the Anglosphere except the Americans and the Irish (and the Irish may want to revisit that after HM's recent visit);
a good chunk of the OECD;
much of the G22;
and 1/4 of the G8. 

Not to mention many of the allies they find amongst their "Coalitions of the Willing" and supporters at the UN.

And besides Massachussetts is and always has been a Commonwealth.

 

[Edward Campbell]

It is a long established principle that when Canada's de facto head of state goes to Washington the person is the GG; that began with Lord Tweedsmuir in 1937.

Our Governor General is the appropriate person to represent Canada, on state visit abroad and to greet heads of state who are making state visits to Canada.

The GG, The Earl of Athlone, not Prime Minister King, welcomed FDR and Churchill (the UK's head of government) to Canada

The former GG greets the US President

The former GG on a state visit to Ukraine.


We've only been doing this stuff since the 1930s - we ought to understand it by now.

HM the Queen is our head of state, de jure, but, de facto and for most practical purposes we, Canada, want a Canadian face, our GG, to be our official 'face' to the world.

 

[Neill McKay]

I do not claim to be a Royal watcher but I cannot recall seeing many maple leaf flags on display when HM or one of her children visit the USA. One normally, I think sees the union jack which is that national flag of the UK.

It's been done once that I know of, quite a while ago (ca. the silver jubilee, I think).  It seems to me that there was a fairly recent event (not the whole trip) in the US that she attended in her Canadian capacity as well, but I'm not sure about that.