King Charles III has long history with Canada, but must step into the spotlight
MONTREAL
As he stood between windwhipped Canadian flags on a podium in Iqaluit in 2017, Prince Charles recalled his official first visit to Canada’s North nearly half a century earlier.
“I have never forgotten the warmth of the welcome from the Inuit people, which made me feel instantly at home, as indeed I have with all Canadians on my subsequent visits,” said the Royal, who drew applause from the crowd in Nunavut’s capital with a halting attempt at an Inuktitut greeting.
With the death of Queen Elizabeth II announced Thursday, King Charles III, as he’s now known, is poised to take over as Canada’s new head of state and form a new relationship with the country.
On trips to Canada as prince, he has stressed a connection to Canada that stretches back decades, encompassing nineteen official visits, family trips and brief stopovers during his military service.
Most recently, Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, travelled to Canada in May as part of the celebrations of the Queen’s platinum jubilee. The three-day tour was focused on climate change, literacy and reconciliation efforts with Indigenous peoples.
The jubilee tour began in St. John’s, N.L., with a solemn moment of reflection on residential school deaths and ended in the North with a meeting with First Nations chiefs on climate change.
Prince Charles said he was deeply moved by conversations with survivors who courageously shared their experiences at residential schools.
“I want to acknowledge their suffering and to say how much our hearts go out to them and their families,” he said during the visit, which some considered a step forward in Crown-Indigenous relations.
But a royal expert says the new King nevertheless faces a daunting challenge in establishing himself in a country that has become skeptical of the monarchy, and in a role that has been so inextricably linked to his mother in many Canadians’ minds.
His relationship with Canada stretches back to his first official visit in 1970, which included touring Manitoba and the Northwest Territories with other members of the Royal Family. During his more recent visits, he has been accompanied by Camilla, whose distant Canadian ancestry he has mentioned.
“Every time I come to Canada, a little more of Canada seeps into my bloodstream — and from there straight to my heart,” he told a crowd in Newfoundland in 2009.
Those official visits have often featured the photo ops and official ceremonies the Canadian public has come to expect from the royals — including Prince Charles feeding a polar bear named Hudson in Winnipeg, trying out DJ equipment in Toronto, playing pickup street hockey in New Brunswick and attending countless artistic performances and military ceremonies.
Among the pomp and pageantry, there have been events that hint of a deeper connection.
Over the years, Prince Charles’ visits to Canada have often featured events and conversations centred around climate change — a domain in which he’s become increasingly outspoken.
In November 2021, Prince Charles urged world leaders gathered at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland to put themselves on “a warlike footing” to reduce emissions.
While Prince Charles’ speech at the climate conference drew headlines, he’s been delivering the same message for decades, including in Canada in 2009 when he described climate change as a “threat posed to all humanity.”
“We are at a defining moment for our civilization,” he told the crowd in Newfoundland.
“Unless we can all, both individually and collectively, take the actions which we now know are necessary, the future is going to be very bleak indeed.”