Canada’s history in six coronations, from Victoria to Charles III

Victoria, 1838

The teenage Victoria would never have guessed she’d be the first monarch of a self-governing Canada. But between her accession on June 20, 1837, and the coronation on June 28, 1838, rebellions – and their crushing defeat – would give the queen a vivid picture of what Canadians wanted for their future.

About the event

Modern coronations are carefully rehearsed, but not 1838′s. Only Victoria and one Westminster Abbey official came prepared for the five-hour event.

Clergymen skipped pages in the complicated program, in one case dismissing Victoria from the abbey too early; an elderly lord tripped on the slippery steps in front of the queen; and her ring finger ached after the archbishop of Canterbury jammed on a ring meant for her pinky.

Outside, the rites attracted as many as 400,000 people, including out-of-towners brought in via London’s brand-new steam railway. Victoria, the first monarch to make Buckingham Palace her main residence, greeted the crowds in processions from there to the abbey and back, a custom her successors would follow.

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The state of Canada

British North America of the 1830s was a patchwork of colonies laid over a much older patchwork of First Nations. Settlers had elected assemblies, but British-appointed governors and their hangers-on made the important decisions. In Lower Canada (now southern Quebec) and Upper Canada (south and eastern Ontario), people disaffected with the oligarchies joined republican parties and secret societies inspired by U.S.-style democracy.

The Canadas were on the edge of revolution by 1837, and it showed during Victoria’s first summer as queen. In Lower Canada’s churches, patriotes protested the Te Deums celebrating her reign. Victoria’s youth and gender also made her a foil for rebels who felt democracy was for adult men only, such as this orator at an 1837 demonstration in Nicolet:

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When armed revolt broke out in Lower and then Upper Canada in the winter of 1837, Victoria was also a rallying symbol for the loyalist militias who put the uprisings down. Author Susanna Moodie, whose soldier husband fought in the Upper Canadian militias, captured their ethos in her Address to the Freemen of Canada:

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The battles that winter, and in a second wave the next year, were military disasters for the rebels. Hundreds died in combat, a few were hanged for treason and dozens were shipped to penal colonies in Australia. Brutal loyalist reprisals destroyed many civilians’ farms and homes.

But the violence convinced Britain that something should change, and it sent a new governor, Lord Durham, to decide what. One half of his solution – merging two Canadas into one – was adopted quickly. The other – making Canada’s governor answerable to its elected representatives – would not arrive until 1848, after a trial run in Nova Scotia, which had never rebelled. This established the form of democracy, responsible government, that put Canadians on a path to full independence.

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Edward VII, 1902, and George V, 1911

Victoria’s heir was a bon vivant whose overindulgence of cigars and rich food ruined his health. He reigned for eight years before dying of heart failure – so Britons who had never seen a coronation in their lifetimes got two in a row. For colonial leaders, the events were a valuable forum for diplomacy, both with one another and the imperial powers-that-be.

About the events

“Impressive ceremony performed without serious mishap” was one of The Globe’s headlines for Edward’s coronation on Aug. 9, 1902, which had been delayed at late notice from June 23 to accommodate the King’s surgery for an abdominal problem. Many foreign delegations did not come to the rescheduled event, sending lower-ranking diplomats instead. Edward was greeted by the first-ever Canadian Coronation Contingent, a force of about 600 soldiers and Mounties. A larger contingent came back to see George crowned on June 22, 1911, which got more favourable Globe headlines, such as “Most striking scene in Britain’s history.”

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The state of Canada

For the leaders of Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and Britain’s South African colonies, these coronations were a chance to meet under one roof and hash out their future. There had been such meetings in London for Victoria’s jubilees, and one in Ottawa in 1894, but in Edwardian times they became regular events. Only “white dominions,” where European settlers held power, had seats at Imperial Conferences, leaving millions of Asian, African and Caribbean people out of decisions affecting them.

At the 1902 and 1911 summits – where prime minister Wilfrid Laurier spoke for Canada – the top agenda item was imperial federation, a scheme to create a global super-state with one British-based parliament. This would give dominions more influence (but less independence) in foreign policy: A united military might, for instance, commit nations to conflicts they did not want to fight in. Laurier – who had endured a fractious debate over Canadian deployments to South Africa – was wary of this. Ultimately, federationism never went anywhere and was a dying cause by the time of the First World War.

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George VI, 1937

George VI was not the man Britons had expected to see crowned on May 12, 1937. When Edward VIII abdicated in December of 1936, organizers stuck to his scheduled coronation date, but with his younger brother as its main attraction.

About the event

To soften the shock of the abdication crisis, this coronation had to both widen the appeal and signal the stability of the monarchy.

Cosmo Lang, archbishop of Canterbury, allowed non-Anglican clergymen to take part for the first time. He still made the king swear to uphold “the Protestant reformed religion established by law,” but a new oath made clear that this applied to Britain only, not dominions such as Catholic-majority Ireland or Australia and New Zealand, which had Catholic first ministers at the time.

The Royal Family invited a handful of people from working-class communities to participate. Their friends back home could listen to the BBC for the first live radio broadcast of a coronation, or watch newsreels that captured the highlights.

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The state of Canada

Between the world wars, dominions secured important new rights that George VI would pledge to uphold.

At the 1926 Imperial Conference, the countries agreed they were “autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status ... though united by a common allegiance to the Crown.” The 1931 Statute of Westminster backed up that promise in British law. New coronation rites reflected this by giving dominions equal billing in this question for the king:

Days after the coronation came the last Imperial Conference, where Mackenzie King and his counterparts got to question the incoming British government of Neville Chamberlain about its policy of appeasement toward the rising fascist dictatorships of Europe. When Britain eventually declared war on Nazi Germany, dominions used their new freedom to decide whether to join the fight, as Canada did, or stay neutral, as Ireland did. After the war, Imperial Conferences gave way to Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings, which reached beyond the “white dominions” to include the decolonizing nations of the Global South.

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Elizabeth II, 1953

The dismantling of the British Empire was in its early stages when Elizabeth became queen at age 25, and she would see its far-reaching consequences in seven decades as head of the Commonwealth. But first: her coronation on June 2, 1953 – the product of 16 months of planning – aimed to introduce her directly to the world on a scale no monarch had attempted.

About the event

Elizabeth let BBC crews into the abbey for history’s first televised coronation, despite the objections of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who told the House of Commons it was “unfitting” to broadcast it “as if it were a theatrical performance.” Theatricality, in this case, was the point. Television allowed the queen to speak to her new subjects not just with words, but with visuals, such as the Norman Hartnell-designed gown incorporating Canadian maple leaves, New Zealand silver ferns and other floral symbols of the Commonwealth realms.

Getting the footage to Canada was a massive effort: Canisters of film were helicoptered to London’s Heathrow Airport, flown to Labrador on British jet bombers, then relayed by the Royal Canadian Air Force to Montreal – all so the CBC could show the ceremony half an hour before American networks did.

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The state of Canada

Official anglocentrism was still strong in the Canada of 1953: The Red Ensign flag bore a Union Jack in its corner, the post office was called Royal Mail Canada and the Constitution was technically a British law. But the economic, immigration and baby booms of the postwar era would change all that.

Imagine a Canadian child born on coronation day. As that child grew older, they would notice the people around them getting younger; by their 13th birthday in 1966, Canada’s median age would hit a historic low of 25.4. With youth came demand for social change, and resistance to the old British symbols of established authority. At age 9, the child of 1953 might have seen Québécois separatists booing the Queen in Quebec City; at 10, the Red Ensigns would make way for Maple Leafs; and in the child’s late teens, the Royal Mail boxes would disappear.

The child would reach voting age in 1971, the debut of Canada’s multiculturalism policy, and age 29 when Elizabeth signed the patriation of the Constitution to Canada. But the child would be 69 years old before she ceased to be their head of state.

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Charles III, 2023

No British monarch has waited as long for the throne as Charles III, but his coronation is due to be more modest in scope and budget than his mother’s. Buckingham Palace says the event “will reflect the Monarch’s role today and look towards the future.”

About the event

When Charles heads to Westminster Abbey on May 6, it will be a shorter route and a smaller military cavalcade than 1953’s, with about a quarter as many guests inside the abbey. Britons have a long weekend of other festivities: A nationwide “Big Lunch” on May 7, an evening concert at Windsor Castle and a May 8 bank holiday featuring a volunteer drive called the Big Help Out. Canada is holding a May 6 celebration in Ottawa and other communities, but no day off on the Monday.

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The state of Canada

The coronation comes roughly a year after Charles’s last Canadian tour as Prince of Wales, where Indigenous communities told him about the horrors of residential schools and the unmarked graves revealed in Kamloops the year before. At the tour’s end in Yellowknife, he and his wife said they left with “heavy hearts” and would be “closely following the next chapter in this country’s great history.” Now, the coronation offers Indigenous people a chance to help write that chapter.

On May 4, Ms. Simon met the King at Buckingham Palace alongside three Indigenous leaders: RoseAnn Archibald of the Assembly of First Nations, Natan Obed of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and Cassidy Caron of the Métis National Council. Ms. Archibald said the meeting was “very positive.” On the 2022 tour, Ms. Archibald asked Charles whether the Crown should apologize for lapses in treaty obligations. It was one of several calls Charles is facing to atone for colonialism’s wrongs, such as from advocates of British slavery reparations to the Caribbean.

Canadians “may never have felt great affection for Charles,” Ms. Simon said in an interview with The Globe and Mail, and he will have work to do to strengthen his connections to the country. She also said she could foresee a “conversation” about the Canadian monarchy’s future, but now was not the time for that. “I think Canada first of all has to have a plan and an alternative as to what it is we want as a country,” Ms. Simon said.

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