Country set to celebrate Queen’s 60-year reign
Canada will mark the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s ascent to the throne with a series of celebratory gestures in Ottawa and across the country in the coming days, including the unveiling of a special Jubilee emblem carved in ice at Ottawa’s annual Winterlude festival — a fitting tribute to the 85-year-old monarch from the snowiest corner of her realm.
Other showcase ceremonies next week will be the dedication of a stained-glass artwork at the Parliament Buildings and Gov. Gen. David Johnston’s presentation of the first 60 Jubilee medals at Rideau Hall to outstanding citizens from all parts of Canada.
The official Jubilee flag will also be flown from the Peace Tower for a week beginning Monday, 60 years to the day since the Queen began her remarkably long, occasionally turbulent, but mostly charmed reign on Feb. 6, 1952.
The former Princess Elizabeth was vacationing in Kenya with Prince Philip when she learned that her father, King George VI, had died and that she had become the symbolic head of Britain and other Commonwealth countries, including Queen of Canada.
Next week’s events will kick-start a year of celebrations in Canada and around the world to honour the Queen’s six decades on the throne, with a planned Thames River pageant in June — involving up to 1,000 elaborately decorated ships and boats in a regal flotilla — expected to be the main Jubilee show-stopper.
Canada’s anniversary tributes to the Queen are more modest in scale. A clearer picture of the further ways the country plans to mark the occasion is expected to emerge next week when Heritage Minister James Moore announces a round of funding for community-based projects.
The federal government revealed in December that it had set a $7.5-million budget to celebrate the royal anniversary. Most of that amount is earmarked for the Jubilee medal presentations, which are to be held in Ottawa and at provincial capitals throughout 2012, with several ceremonies scheduled for next week.
Moore will also attend Monday’s ceremony at Rideau Hall, where Johnston will launch the medal initiative by presenting one medal to a worthy Canadian for each year since Elizabeth became queen.
Eventually, more than 60,000 of the country’s most dedicated volunteers and outstanding achievers are to be awarded the Jubilee medal, the striking of which began in December at the Royal Canadian Mint.
Not all of Canada’s gifts to the Queen have awaited the official Feb. 6 start of the Jubilee anniversary.
Canada Post recently unveiled a set of commemorative stamps marking each decade of the Queen’s reign, including one design that recalls the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth’s own great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria, in 1897.