Charles and Camilla at Dundurn Castle, Hamilton
Hamilton proved not to be a hotbed of republican sentiment last week on November 9, 2009 when Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, visited Dundurn Castle.
Dundurn Castle (completed 1835) was built as the stately home of Sir Allan MacNab, an influential and wealthy settler of Hamilton who just so happens to be the great-great-great grandfather of Camilla. Dundurn Castle is now a well-loved civic museum in west Hamilton. It is one of the most attractive 19th century buildings in Canada and as a museum gives an excellent idea of the upstairs-downstairs life in an early Canadian estate.
Dundurn Castle is located a few blocks from where I live, which made it for me the most convenient royal visit ever. I simply had to stroll over to its grounds and wait for the royal excitement to build. And build it did. Hamiltonians, as it turned out, were very excited to see Charles and Camilla.
We don’t get many royal visits here in Hamilton so we didn’t know quite what to expect. Would we be dazzled by the celebrity status of the visiting royals [yes!], would the royals make us feel unworthy and unloved and treat us like residents of a simple steel town [no!], would we tire of the artificiality of an heir to a foreign crown visiting a former colony [not at all!]. We lapped it all up. There was nary a voice of dissent; no discouraging words were heard. Overall, it appeared to be a very successful visit.
I think the fact that Dundurn Castle has a direct family connection to Camilla had a positive effect on the mood of the visit. I think it would be impossible to predict this result prior to their visit. Through skill, some shared history and good luck, Charles and Camilla struck gold this time. They encountered something for which all royals must occasionally yearn: an adoring crowd of loyal subjects.
I am by no means a monarchist but I must confess I too enjoyed the royal visit. I enjoyed the fact that it brought publicity and recognition to the charms of Dundurn Castle and Hamilton. Charles and Camilla appeared to be a stable middle-aged couple who are happy in their own skin. They are not glamour-pusses in the manner of Diana but they appeared to be quite skilled at small-talk with the locals, of asking pertinent questions and of understanding to perfection their mind-numbingly ceremonial role.
In anticipation of the royal visit to Canada there were several newspaper articles detailing how Canadians were quite apathetic about the monarchy, didn’t think much of Charles, or had no idea that Canada was configured as a constitutional monarchy. But based on my experience during the royal visit, I don’t think Charles should worry about his family’s future prospects in Canada. Canadians are clearly in no hurry to get rid of their monarchy. There is a greater chance that Canada will vote to become a Vegan Republic or a Bolshevik Protectorate than that it will cease to be a parliamentary democracy with a British monarch as Head of State. The concept of the ‘Crown’ is deeply embedded in the Canadian system of government and psyche; it would be hard to imagine Canada without it, regardless of what its citizens might think about any one particular heir or monarch.
The whole concept of a ‘constitutional monarchy’ seems to be a little counter-intuitive. You would think that monarchies would tend to be deeply conservative places, but there are so many exceptions to this rule (e.g. the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) that it doesn’t appear to hold water. Republics are not necessarily more progressive and can sometimes veer in odd directions, as our neighbour to the south demonstrates. There is some evidence that Canada’s position as a stable, sometimes progressive democracy is not only in spite of its monarchist history but also because of it. Or maybe this is just the Kool-Aid talking.
Prince Charles meeting the crowd at Dundurn Castle
Charles is the scion of a wealthy, multi-national corporation who has spent most of his life waiting to become a king. It appears though that he spends his money in interesting ways. In architectural circles he is notorious for his interventionist and anti-modernist stance, but overall as an heir apparent, he seems harmless enough–perhaps even progressive in some ways. He is a patron of many causes, some of which could directly benefit Canada, such as heritage architecture, urban sustainability, environmentalism, support for disadvantaged youth, organic farming and alternative medicine. Interestingly, the current Conservative government in Ottawa has absolutely no interest in such causes. Clearly, their brand of conservatism is quite different from Charles’s.
