It is difficult for most Americans to understand that this is a deeply personal column for me. The Grace of God Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, and all her other dominions, died last week at the age of 96.
My editors dutifully remove any superfluous “u’s” and other literary quirks unique to what until a few days ago one would have referred to as the Queen’s English, even though I am Canadian, a fact not made readily clear in print. Within a few minutes of engaging in conversation with me, the stereotypical British-influenced pronunciation of words like about or process come out.
Being Canadian means that I am a subject of the Crown, as Canada’s head of state is the British monarch. As a practical matter, this is a formality for most Canadians and most Britons, but as a young man, I swore my allegiance to the Queen. The oath of allegiance I made to the Queen was something I took seriously, as my military service was relatively undistinguished, but nonetheless formative.
I am often asked why I am not an American citizen. I have fulfilled all of the requirements and am a permanent resident. My daughter and I have both made this country our home. It’s ironic that I work in public affairs, but I can’t vote. I took an oath when I was a young man, but I don’t know the answer. If you want to become American citizenship, you have to give up all previous oaths. Is that symbolic? Possibly. There are symbols that are not meaningless. Oaths of allegiance, if taken seriously, are a bind of honour, duty and loyalty that are nearly so. Someone once wrote that honour is a gift a man gives himself. It is not something to be bartered or traded like baseball cards, at least to me.
It’s not about the person of The Queen as much as it is about what she represented, though in reality it is difficult to separate the two, and the majesty of Elizabeth made maintaining loyalty to the Crown easier. She bore the mantle with all the grace and dignity that it demanded and that made her remarkable and historic reign even more so. Her 70 years of rule was the longest of any monarch in history. During the reign of Queen Victoria, she presided over governments headed by 15 Prime Ministers, and the last one was born a hundred years later. The Queen remained constant during 70 years of change.
The central virtue of the British monarchy is the continuity it provides, a thread that runs through British society, and that of the former colonies, which serves as a tether to its past, its customs and traditions, and should not be dissipated into the darkness of unmoored modernity. The purpose of the institution is to connect the past, present and future; not eschatological, but worldly. The epitome of virtue, grace, culture, manners and a distinguished moral leadership always on display for her subjects and for the world was found in Queen Elizabeth II. Her intuitive knowledge was that her title was not about her, but that she was the standard bearer of an institution whose importance and awesome responsibility was beyond that of any individual human. Not everyone who was born that mantle bore it well. Elizabeth, by the grace of God, did a lot.
It’s possible that it’s an insult to American individualist ideals, which I admire enough to have moved and settled here and devoted my professional life to defending, but deep down there remains that tie to that common thread, as yet unbreakable. It is the tie that causes me to grieve and weep for the Queen. There is a Queen. My queen.
A recovering journalist and a political and public affairs consultant is based in Denver.