Canadians Greet King Charles’s Coronation With Muted Response

TORONTO – Despite his status as Canada’s head of state, only modest celebrations have been planned this weekend for the coronation of King Charles III in the nation’s capital, Ottawa, and the turnout is expected to be lower than typical for other Canadian public celebrations.

Last May, Charles’ most recent visit to the country drew media attention and crowds in the hundreds instead of thousands.

When he became king after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, five months later, ascended the throne was greeted with a shrug in the country that Mary Simon, the viceroy of Canada, commented on this in a recent interview. with the national broadcaster. He also cited a public opinion poll in which respondents viewed Charles poorly.

“We need to give him the opportunity to show that he is a good leader,” said Ms. Simon, Canada’s governor general. This weekend, he was part of a delegation from Canada, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several Indigenous leaders, attending the coronation ceremony in London.

At a time when several other Commonwealth countries are considering severing relations, Canada’s relationship with the British crown is the subject of recurring public debate. But the restlessness never turned into rebellion – in part because replacing the monarchy required a major effort to amend the Canadian Constitution and, in doing so, raised the complicated issue of the validity of the crown’s treaties with indigenous peoples.

Quebec, originally a French-speaking colony conquered by the British in 1763, has taken some steps to reduce the crown. In December, the province made it optional for elected officials to swear allegiance to the king. But Quebec also used to be a bastion of loyalty to the monarchy, which has a 200-year history for the crown, said Damien-Claude Bélanger, a history professor at the University of Ottawa who wrote a book on the subject.

In history, the upper class of the province rallied around the monarchy as a civil, neutral institution that represented stability, he said.

“We have had nothing but the continuity of the monarchy in our political system since the beginning of the 17th century,” he said, “and that stability, that means to some people.”