Re.: Canada should show more enthusiasm for King Charles’s coronation, The Globe and Mail, Feb. 21, 2023
John Fraser’s opinion piece highlights points on which republicans and monarchists, apparently, agree.
In regards to the upcoming coronation of Charles Windsor, in London, England, Fraser surmises, as do many republicans, that the federal government hasn’t shown enthusiasm for marking the event because it wants to shed “as little attention as possible on a bizarre medieval ceremony that seems to some Canadians to have little if any relevance, other than showing now-embarrassing links to a colonial past.”
A correction that needs to be made in regards to Fraser’s observation, is that recent polls, such as the one conducted by Angus Reid, in Nov., 2021, which revealed that 66% of Canadians oppose official recognition of Charles Windsor as our head of state, make it clear that its not just “some” Canadians who feel this way but most Canadians.
Aside from a shared suspicion in regards to the government’s lack of enthusiasm for marking the coronation, there is further agreement between republicans and monarchists. Fraser admonishes that if his suspicion is correct, and “…is, in fact, the reasoning that’s behind the silence and seeming inactivity surrounding our responses to the coronation, then the government should have the courage of its convictions and start a dialogue to turn Canada into a republic.”
Canadian republicans couldn’t agree more!
Ashok Charles
Executive Director, Republic Now