CALGARY MONARCHISTS MARK ‘JOYOUS OCCASION’
Hamida Virji has been doing her usual business this week selling Simpkins sweets, Pontefract cakes and Marks & Spencer biscuits.
What’s different, though, is the chatter with her regular customers, many of whom hail from across the pond.
“It’s royal baby, royal baby, all the time,” says the owner of The British Pantry, the northwest Calgary shop she opened in 1997 to serve those looking for everything from Union Jack hats and shrimp crisps to royal mugs and Coronation Street magnets. “Everyone’s been so excited about it.”
When we speak Monday at lunchtime, the little fellow known only as the Prince of Cambridge — the long version might take up to a week to be officially announced — is still an unknown gender to Virgi and her customers.
“I have a feeling it’s a girl, but I could be wrong,” says customer Pamela Mellis, an expat Brit who came to Canada with her husband Norman in 1967. “All I can say for sure is that it’ll be a joyous occasion when it finally arrives.”
Within an hour, the easier of Mellis’s two predictions is borne out, and then some. By 2 p.m. MST, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama and just about every other world leader have released official congrats; nearly every TV channel in my 100-plus universe shows massive crowds surging towards the doors of London’s St. Mary’s Hospital; and Twitter explodes in corresponding fashion, with my personal fave coming from fake Queen Elizabeth account “Succession secured. Gin. Bed.”
So I’m hardly gobsmacked to find local monarchists agreeing that the worldwide obsession with just one of about 370,000 babies born on this day is more than justified.
“I am going to wear my Union flag cufflinks and pocket square to work tomorrow,” says Ald. John Mar on a break from city council meetings. “Obviously, this is extraordinary news for royal watchers.”
Over at the British Consulate office downtown, Tony Kay’s phone lines light up like a Christmas tree with the announcement of the newborn who will be third in line to the British throne.
“This is not just wonderful news for the U.K., but for Canada and all Commonwealth countries,” says Kay, Calgary’s first resident British consul-general.
While the birth of a boy sidesteps the issue of Quebec chal-
I am going to wear my Union flag cufflinks and pocket square to work tomorrow
ALD. JOHN MAR
lenging Canada’s constitutional amendment to reform the rules of royal succession, Kay says that shouldn’t be the topic of discussion on this day.
“There are always these debates ongoing about constitutional issues,” says Kay who admits he might “wet the baby’s head” — which means pour a drink and give a toast — when he sits down to his usual Monday roast chicken dinner with his family. “But today is not the day. This is the day to focus on a very joyous occasion.”
Norman Leach believes this newcomer will only make a popular couple even more popular, along with helping to shore up those who see the British royal family as relevant in 21st century society.
“This continues the trend towards renewal, of something that the Queen has been doing for the past few years,” says Leach, a local author and historian who is also the membership director for the Monarchist League of Canada’s Calgary branch.
“I mean, if you told me 10 years ago that the Queen would go along with a James Bond skit at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
While not everyone shares the same sentiments about the role of the British monarchy in Canadian society — full disclosure, I am among those who see it as antiquated, but understand there are complex political and constitutional considerations involved — Dawn Johnston agrees with Kay that there’s just something about a little bundle of joy that transcends even such ongoing debates.
“I think for the next few days, muttering on about the relevance of the monarchy is in poor taste,” says Johnston, a senior instructor in communication studies at the University of Calgary, who puts herself in the ambivalent category when it comes to the monarchy. “This is an exciting, festive moment and the world needs good news like this from time to time.”
In her capacity as a pop culture expert, Johnston says she’ll be most interested in how the world will — and already has — responded to this new family. When the couple waited a full four hours to reveal the birth officially, she says the international media reacted as though affronted: “That’s what kind of landscape we’re in today — we feel we deserve to know everything and right up to the minute.”
The baby, she says, will also experience a royal childhood unlike any other. “He will grow up as a celebrity, a pop culture icon the likes of which his father never did,” says Johnston, who notes the fame will be balanced out by his media-savvy parents, who’ve already showed an ability to roll with the punches. “We will speculate on every milestone of his life.”
What Hamida Virji doesn’t have to speculate about is just how busy she’ll be over the coming days at The British Pantry.
“We’ll be taking orders for the official baby china,” says Virji, a native of Tanzania who grew up in England. “I think this baby will be an even bigger deal than the Duchess and Duke’s wedding.”