Canadians embrace ‘Megxit’ and hope for a royal fairy tale
Some have suggested they could become king and queen of Canada.
Tim Hortons, the quintessentially Canadian coffee chain, offered them “free coffee for life.”
Others recommended Ottawa, the nation’s sleepy capital, as a possible home, noting that, if they squinted hard enough, they could pretend the Parliament buildings were palaces.
Prince Harry and his wife, the former Meghan Markle, also known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, electrified the world last week with their announcement that they planned to step back from official royal duties and live part-time in North America.
But even before they have revealed which country they would like to make home, many Canadians were already giddy at the prospect they could be moving to Canada — part of the loose federation of nations known as the British Commonwealth — and injecting some glamour into the sprawling, bone-chillingly cold country.
It is “the fairy tale ending we all deserve,” Anne T. Donahue, a Toronto-based writer, gushed in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading newspaper. She called their decision “a power move” for the royal couple to “stop putting up with the nonsense” and take ownership of their own lives.
“So Harry and Meghan might be moving to Canada. Let’s be honest, wouldn’t you?” added the conservative-leaning National Post. Canadians are excited at this opportunity to live up to their “national reputation as polite host,” it wrote, extolling the potential economic benefits for Toronto if they decide to live there.
But Tim Hortons may have best captured the national mood with its appeal to the couple.
“No pressure, Meghan and Harry,” it wrote on Twitter. “But if you do choose to move to Canada, free coffee for life. Think about it.”
Rumors that Canada, which features Prince Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, on its coinage and its $20 bills, was their preferred refuge from Britain were stoked this week after the couple’s statement announcing their plans conspicuously mentioned “North America” rather than the United States.
And after the announcement, the duchess returned to Canada, according to the BBC, where she had reportedly left their 8-month old baby, Archie, after spending the holidays in British Columbia.
During their recent sixweek vacation, the couple enchanted local residents on Vancouver Island by interrupting a hike to gallantly help a couple trying to take a selfie, according to local news reports. They were also turned away by a seafood restaurant serving caviar and steamed clams amid security concerns.
Even without Canada’s historical connection to its former colonial ruler, the duchess, an American, has close ties to the country and many Canadian friends. For seven years, during her previous career as an actress, she lived in Toronto while filming the popular legal drama
“Suits.”
The Canadian media’s relative lack of intrusiveness could also offer a welcome reprieve from the British tabloid press, which has dubbed the entire endeavor “Megxit.”
Perhaps mindful of the couple’s potential to burnish Canada’s brand, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — himself a member of political royalty as the son of a former prime minister — welcomed them on Twitter in December around their vacation period.
“Prince Harry, Meghan, and Archie, we’re all wishing you a quiet and blessed stay in Canada,” he wrote. “You’re among friends, and always welcome here.”
Philippe Lagasse, an expert on British monarchy at Carleton University in Ottawa, suggested this sometimes self-deprecating country was greeting a potential royal migration as a “vindication of the Canadian way of life.”
Such is the enthusiasm for the couple in Canada that a poll released this week showed that 60% of Canadians supported appointing Prince Harry as governor general, the crown’s representative in Canada’s system of constitutional monarchy.
“It’s a big source of national pride that the royal couple would want to be here,” Lagasse said. “It makes Canadians feel better about themselves.”
He even floated a view that, hypothetically, the federal Parliament could make Harry and Meghan king and queen of Canada — relying on recent rulings in Canadian courts on the issue of royal succession, and various loopholes in Canadian law.
But he stressed that a majority of Canadians would be unlikely to support that, given the reticence, he said, about revisiting constitutional debates that risk dividing the country.