On Day 2 of his latest visit to Toronto, Prince Harry spent time with Canadian veterans.
The royal, who served as a combat pilot himself, stopped by the Sunnybrook Veterans Centre on Thursday afternoon.
According to his office website, he was there “meeting and having a laugh with Canadian veterans who showed off their creative arts programs,” which include everything from ceramics to photography. A highlight, per his website, was seeing the helmets that veterans have turned into “profound works of self-expression.”
One of the veterans Prince Harry met was 101-year-old Brenda Reid, who served in an all-woman-run Royal Canadian Navy station in Nova Scotia. While chatting with a group of residents, the prince asked about their best war stories. Reid joked, “You can’t always believe the boys.”
Prince Harry, who also smiled and posed for pictures with veterans at the centre, was to spend the evening at a fundraiser for True Patriot Love, the Canadian charity that invited him to the city.
Earlier in the day, the royal also issued an apology to the entire country over “hat gate,” otherwise known as when he wore a Dodgers hat to a World Series playoff game, despite being heir to Canada’s throne. “I was under duress,” he told CTV News, going on to claim that he is a true Blue Jays fan at heart.
Keeping under the radar for much of this visit, his official website tells us that the Duke of Sussex spent Wednesday morning with members of the Canadian Army’s reserve forces: The close-to-home-in-name Queen’s Own Rifles and Royal Regiment of Canada.
He apparently watched as reservists displayed various skills — band members, dive team members and a weapons display among them — and then chatted with service members and their families about “their dual role as reservists and civilians.”
The Sussex site doesn’t specify, but it’s likely this visit was at the Fork York Armoury, which is a big hub for reservists in the GTA.
The prince was in Toronto Wednesday and Thursday to attend multiple events in honour of Remembrance Day. On Monday, his office announced that he would be in Toronto for several events this week, timed to Remembrance Day.
On Day 1 of his Toronto visit, Prince Harry was mostly out of the spotlight: He was set to attend a few unspecified events that “support the Canadian Armed Services and veteran community,” and a private lunch to give a talk about veterans’ issues.
This is the Duke of Sussex’s second visit to Canada in 2025: He was in British Columbia in February for the Invictus Winter Games, where he thanked our nation for being “really good” to him and his wife, Meghan Markle.
That’s a nod to the couple’s deep history with Canada. They stayed on Vancouver Island for several weeks right after announcing their decision to step away from working royal life in 2020, and much of their courtship seems to have played out in Toronto because of Meghan’s work here as an actor filming the TV show “Suits.” They also made their first public appearance as a couple when the Toronto hosted his Invictus Games, an Olympics-like competition for wounded service people, in 2017.
After the L.A. Dodgers’ World Series win, Meghan posted footage from their home theatre of him looking bereft while she celebrated the Dodgers’ win — suggesting his baseball loyalties may indeed lie with the team whose country he’s in line to inherit the throne of (his earlier appearance at a playoff game in a Dodgers’ hat notwithstanding).
There are some corners of the internet that are raising their eyebrows at the timing of this visit, which happens right when his older, estranged brother, Prince William, is in Brazil to celebrate The Earthshot Prize, the future king’s flagship sustainability project. People magazine, however, “understands” — code for someone on the inside has told them this — that this visit was organized over a year ago, and the royals across the pond were told about it. The reason that it’s all been announced at the last minute, however, is because of Harry’s ongoing concerns about his security given the fact that he no longer gets government-funded protection.
