Long Live The Queen!

In 1953 I was selected to represent Sussex in a tour of Canada that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had taken the previous year. This tour was sponsored by Garfield Weston, the Canadian industrialist and philanthropist, and there were 50 British and 50 Canadian teenage girls on the tour.

Before we left for Canada we spent the day on a stand in Oxford Street watching the Coronation. The British girls were in Hunting Pink jackets and the Canadians were in Royal Blue suits and we sat in the shape of ER II, with the British girls making the letters and the Canadians the background. I was the end of the “E” (photograph).

We were able to see the actual ceremony on TVS on the stand, too. We met Odette Churchill, the war heroine, and her daughter travelled with us to Canada.

It was the most wonderful day, with all the fabulous colours, after the drab war years that we had experienced.

Many of us are still in contact after 65 years, and we are so proud of our Queen.

Jill Girling (nee Williams), Wiltshire.