It was during one of the overly warm days in this past August that are often referred to as the dog days of summer. It had to be a dog day because a reporter with a major Canadian newspaper got away with comparing the royal offspring of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to pedigree dogs. She thought the royal offspring were cuter than dogs but it proved that sometimes you can slip things past the best editors.
While this writer might disapprove of things royal, the pretences of it in Canada and is definitely not a monarchist, he would not compare the royal children to being bred like pedigree dogs. That seems to be going too far.
Mind you, we certainly agree with the writer that the monarchy—in Canada—is a massively expensive, outmoded institution. Canadians get none of the tourism advantages that the royals offer the Brits. We just get to kiss the hem occasionally when they do a walk about here just to remind us that we are part of the foolishness.
The Cambridge’s sire and dam along with their princely and princessly(?) young progeny are on the Canadian west coast to wow us colonials. Somehow it reminds us of an election being due soon out there and guess who will be front and centre with the royals while in beautiful British Columbia.
The wayward writer who started this compares the royals to the Kardashians. The first time this writer asked someone “What the hell is a Kardashian(?)” the follow-up to the answer was “You have got to be kidding!”
But after giving it some thought, we conceded that “Well, we guess the Americans have to have their form of royals, too.”
The best description of Canada’s royals was the newspaper writer’s suggestion that the royals are like a living, breathing incarnation of the Yule log television channel—an “intoxicating spectacle of dullness, as comforting and mind-numbing as it is predictable.”
But the writer (Emma Teitel of the Toronto Star) gets her best quote from Robert Finch, Dominion Chairman of the Monarchist League of Canada. He tells us that “the one thing that remains constant is the Queen. I think that continuity is reassuring for Canadians.”
Maybe dullness can reign but this writer loses interest in the Yule log channel after a very short time of watching.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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