For various reasons beginning with C — COVID, a cancer diagnosis, that son in California saying some not so flattering things about his parenting and the family business — it’s taken King Charles a while to really find his stride in this whole monarch thing.
But in Canada, it feels like he’s finally got his groove back. Or maybe even found it for the first time in his reign.
What’s certain is that King Charles felt very, very comfortable here in the largest of his foreign realms. (And no, that’s not just because he left the Imperial State Crown and associated regalia at home and elected to open Parliament in a lounge suit instead.)
It’s something he articulated quite explicitly — and rather viscerally — in the part of the throne speech that he wrote himself.
“As I have said before, every time I come to Canada, a little more of Canada seeps into my bloodstream — and from there straight to my heart,” he said from a throne partially made out of wood from a tree felled at Windsor Castle.
And maybe it’s that Canadian hemoglobin circulating in his veins that loaned His Majesty a certain swagger on this 20th visit. Whatever the cause, we got a bolder, looser Charles than we’ve seen thus far in his reign.
Case in point? His not-so-subtle editorializing when he got to the line in the throne speech stating the “true north is, indeed, strong and free.” The government may have put the words in his mouth, but the eye contact around the room as he said it? That was about as close to an endorsement as we’ll ever get out of our constitutional monarch. (And a bold edging toward the line from a man who got into trouble for interfering in British politics when he was Prince of Wales.)
Throughout his visit, it seems clear that the King was just plain happy to be here. He cracked a smile during “God Save The Queen.” He and Camilla, looking close as two peas in a royal pod, could be seen chatting happily while waiting for the speech to begin and exchanging what looked like little jokes at various points on their walkabouts.
There could be no better way than those walkabouts to perfectly illustrate just how up for a chat Charles was on this trip; case in point, when he practically had to be dragged onto the plane to leave yesterday. Every time it looked like he was done shaking hands and having a word, he darted across to someone else from the honour guard there to see him off — police officers, soldiers, the government staffers who pulled this trip together. At one point, we saw Camilla gently manoeuvre him out of a chin wag to take a quick official photograph.
Wherever he and Camilla went, he took his sweet time: quipping with people farther back in the crowd, shaking hand after hand, seemingly paying special attention to First Nations and Indigenous guests as well as veterans. If some of the ceremonial elements came off a little rote, such as the rather stiff tree planting moment, his focus seemed to be on people, not protocol.
In an era where royal tours can sometimes feel like they’re more reputational risk and trouble than they’re worth — see Will and Kate’s infamous Caribbean disaster, which deepened rather than improved anti-Crown sentiment — this particular royal tour feels like a rare unmitigated success.
The credit here goes firmly to Charles the person as much as the symbol. A visit from our King to highlight our unique democracy is a nice gesture. But the way he seemed to show up — as chipper and charming as we’ve ever seen him, making relatively voluble declarations of his “pleasure and pride” in being asked to come at this moment — felt like a point scored in the pro-monarchy contingent.
And Charles, for his part, seemed to get something from that too. Like, perhaps, his groove back.
