Britain's King Charles III arrives for the 200th Sovereign's Parade at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Camberley, England, on April 14.Alberto Pezzali/The Associated Press
Ottawa is to mark the King’s coronation next month with a 21-gun salute fired from Parliament Hill, as the Peace Tower and federal offices are illuminated in emerald green, in tandem with buildings across the Commonwealth.
On coronation day, Canada Post will unveil the first stamp with King Charles’s image while the Canadian Heraldic Authority will present emblems for the coronation and change of reign, featuring the Royal Monogram – CIIIR.
The federal Heritage Department will stage a celebratory event that day, May 6, near Parliament featuring Indigenous musicians, a slam poet and the PEI Celtic fusion group Inn Echo.
Muralist Dominic Laporte, known for his monumental public artworks featuring birds and plants, will spray-paint a live piece with a thematic link to flowers, a nod to the King’s affection for the natural world. King Charles is known for his love of plants. He revealed in 1986 that he talks to his to make them grow.
Mr. Laporte, who started off as a graffiti artist, told The Globe and Mail that the mural may also feature a crown.
“It will be a semi-abstract interpretation,” he said. “I’m very honoured to be asked to do something like this.”
The hour-long celebratory event at 144 Wellington Street, attended by members of the King’s Privy Council, will be one of many across Canada marking the coronation.
Lieutenant-governors, who represent the monarch in the provinces, are staging community celebrations, tree plantings and military parades, the Heritage Department said.
“For over 50 years, His Majesty King Charles III has had strong ties with our country and the people who live here,” said Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez.
A poll for the non-profit Angus Reid Institute found that 2 in 5 Canadians don’t care about the upcoming coronation, though 20 per cent say they are likely to tune in and watch it on TV.
The poll found that 52 per cent don’t want Canada to continue as a constitutional monarchy for generations to come, and also think that Charles will be a worse monarch than his mother Elizabeth.
Sixty per cent of Canadians oppose swearing oaths to Charles as King, putting his image on the currency and recognizing him as head of state.
Among the Canadians watching the coronation on television will be Brian Bailey, whose parents owned a 2,000-acre potato farm outside Carberry, Man., which the Royal Family visited in 1970.
The Queen, Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Anne and Prince Charles spent a few days relaxing there during an official tour, riding horses belonging to the RCMP.
“Prince Charles was very affable and made his way around the family and chatted to everybody” Mr. Bailey said.
Governor-General Mary Simon, who is the King’s official representative in Canada, is opening up her Ottawa residence, Rideau Hall, and its greenhouse to the public on May 6 and 7. Visitors to the estate will be able to watch a recording of the coronation and hear musical performances by members of the Central Band of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).
Ms. Simon will be among the Canadians to attend the coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London.
Members of the CAF – including the navy, air force and Canada’s special-operations command – will accompany the King in the coronation procession, together with Mounties on horses that the RCMP has gifted to the Royal Family.
They will be riding George, Elizabeth, Sir John, Darby, and Noble, a stunning black mare presented to King Charles last month, continuing the RCMP’s tradition of giving horses to the monarch.
Ottawa’s $250,000 to celebrate King Charles’s coronation with stories of his ties to Canada
King’s coronation: Three crowns, two carriages and a shorter route
In 1969, the RCMP gave the late Queen a jet-black horse, called Burmese, which would become her favourite.
The Queen was riding the mare in 1981, on the way to the trooping-of-the colour parade, when a man in the crowd fired six shots, which turned out to be blanks, at the Queen. The horse was startled but did not bolt.
The Canadian Heraldic Authority has produced a coronation emblem topped by a crown, with the royal monogram – CIIIR - in the centre, and a ring of green triangular shapes meant to evoke pennants displayed at a celebration.
Ottawa has also given a grant of $250,000 to the Royal Canadian Geographical Society to chronicle the monarch’s links with Indigenous people and his travels in Canada, including a perilous dive beneath the Arctic ice when he was 26 years old with undersea explorer Joe MacInnis.
During the dive in the North West Passage, the future King struggled to control the air in his inflatable diving suit and bumped his head on the two-metre-thick ice.
Charles ascended toward the ice hole, Mary Poppins-style, wearing a bowler hat and with an unfurled umbrella that Mr. MacInnis had planted on the sea floor for the dive as a joke.