COMFORTED BY QUEEN’S ADDRESS.
A MESSAGE OF HOPE AND STRENGTH AT A TIME WHEN WE NEED IT THE MOST
Iwas listening to Classic FM on the weekend when regular programming was interrupted by the voice of Her Majesty the Queen, with a message to the Commonwealth about the coronavirus. Blimey!
Classical FM is a British radio station I listen to on my UK Radios app. There’s something extra soothing about hearing classical music from five time zones away — at 8 p.m., with the skies darkening and the day winding down, it’s already the wee hours in London. It hastens the feel of late-night coziness. A small tumbler of Scotch feels even more appropriate than usual.
I’m also a sucker for all things British. My folks were Canadian, but my father’s parents hailed from Scotland and England (truly a match made in heaven), while my mom descended from the United Empire Loyalists who came to British North America after the American Revolution. As a child, my Saturday dinners were backed by the voice of Ray Sonin hosting CFRB radio’s Calling All Britons.
So I have a cultural and possibly even genetic affinity for the Crown. (Also Netflix’s The Crown, the first three seasons of which make for great isolation viewing. Season 4 finished principal photography just before the pandemic took hold, which means it should arrive on the streaming service late this year.)
An address from the Queen is not especially rare. She records an annual Christmas message, for instance; the latest touched on the anniversaries of the first moon landing (50) and the D-day invasions (75), the birth of her eighth great-grandchild (to Harry and Meghan) and the bicentennial of the birth of her great-great-grandmother, Victoria.
But it was only the fifth time she had made such a public rallying cry. The others were mostly personal occasions — on the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales (1997), and the Queen Mother (2002), and the Queen’s own Diamond Jubilee in 2012. The only world event to thus stir her was the first Gulf War in 1991. Even during the Falklands War of 1982 she was silent.
And so these sudden and brief remarks — just over four minutes in length — had the weirdly galvanizing effect of somehow making the current crisis feel suddenly more real.
These are strange times, after all, and strange can be synonymous with “unreal.” On my rare journeys out of doors, I cross empty streets once teeming with traffic, look skyward for jumbo jets that are no longer there, and watch wild foxes meander unconcerned through urban neighbourhoods.
Is this what it was like living in Toronto in October 1918, a month when 1,800 in the city died of the Spanish Flu, prompting the shutdown of “all theatres, movie picture shows and other places of amusement”? Maybe, but one century can’t be directly mapped onto another. We have radio, television, streaming, Tiger King! Though if we want to ride the streetcar or visit a place of amusement, it’s 1918 all over again.
One way or another, we’re living through history, but we don’t yet know how this era ends, or whether we’re in another epoch altogether. No one woke up on the morning of Oct. 25, 1929, and muttered: “Well, here we are in the Great Depression.”
This is part of what made the Queen’s speech so powerful. The 93-year-old Monarch seemed to be addressing history as well as her people when she said: “Those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any, that the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet, good humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterize this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past. It defines our present and our future.”
It was almost Churchillian in its cadence, a subtle reminder that the former Princess Elizabeth who spoke to child evacuees during the Second World War (80 years ago!) ascended to the throne during Churchill’s second term. She has seen 14 PMS since; the latest, Boris Johnson, is even now in hospital with the coronavirus.
She also struck a remarkably inclusive tone when she noted: “Though self-isolating may at times be hard, many people of all faiths, and of none, are discovering that it presents an opportunity to slow down, pause and reflect in prayer or mediation.” This from a woman whose full title is “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God,” blah blah blah, “Defender of the Faith.”
She concluded with another reminder of past difficulties overcome: “We will be with our friends again, we will be with our families again, we will meet again.” We’ll Meet Again is of course the song made famous by Vera Lynn (still with us, aged 103) and practically the unofficial anthem of the Second World War.
We’ll Meet Again was first recorded in September 1939. One year later the Blitz began; in its first month, 5,730 Britons were killed in the bombings, almost the same number who have died since March 5, when the nation recorded its first coronavirus-related fatality.
Things aren’t nearly as bad in this corner of the Commonwealth, with 321 deaths as of this writing. But no one is certain what this means. Are we on the verge of locking this thing down? Days away from exponential growth that will make Canada the next Italy, or the next U.S.A? Or are we somewhere in the middle?
Her Majesty doesn’t know either, but she has forcefully added her voice to the chorus who maintain that staying at home “is the right thing to do.” As I settle down with an afternoon cup of tea (somehow this crisis has flipped a switch in my chromosomes, and I require Earl Grey on a daily basis) I am comforted by that voice. And on this day in history — today — you take comfort wherever you can find it.
‘WE WILL BE WITH OUR FRIENDS AGAIN, WE WILL BE WITH OUR FAMILIES AGAIN, WE WILL MEET AGAIN.’