‘LIFE TAKES STRANGE TURNS’
Michael Jackson’s quiet life in academia jumped the tracks, leading him to become Saskatchewan’s foremost monarchist
Michael Jackson doesn’t like the word “monarchist.” “I find it can be a caricature,” he said. “You think of little old ladies drinking tea, and so on, obsessed with the details of the royal family’s social life. “That’s not what it’s about for me.” However, Jackson is, in many ways, Saskatchewan’s foremost monarchist. He believes fervently in Canada’s constitutional monarchy, especially when measured against the partisan nightmare south of the border. “I like the idea of that nonpartisan head of state,” he said. “A hereditary monarch is above and beyond it all ... You need a balance to the electoral politics of the day.” Jackson has met Queen Elizabeth II a half dozen times, organized tours for 10 members of the royal family and became the province’s first member of the Royal Victorian Order. He’s written extensively about the Crown in Canada, and helped bring symbols of the monarchy to Saskatchewan. Jackson is now retired, living in Regina with his wife, his cat and a collection of mementos from his long career as Saskatchewan’s chief of protocol. The photos and gifts in his basement tell the story of three decades of royal visits to an unpretentious corner of the Commonwealth realms. “The members of the royal family relax here, because people are very respectful and polite, but they’re very friendly and relaxed and they don’t put on airs,” said Jackson.
Jackson always had an interest in the Crown, but he took a winding road to a career as Saskatchewan’s sherpa to the royals. He was born in Britain to a Canadian father and a British mother. The family moved to Oakville, Ont., soon after the Second World War. Jackson studied French literature and spent years in Caen, France. He was planning to teach French literature at university, and did so briefly in Ontario and Saskatchewan. His passion for the railroads derailed those plans, though. Jackson co-founded Transport 2000 Canada, which he calls a “consumer movement” to defend rail transport in Canada. Soon afterwards, the Saskatchewan government was planning a visit by Queen Elizabeth II and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. It was 1978, and would be the couple’s final train voyage in Canada. Jackson was a natural fit to coordinate the royal train. “It was a wonderful operation,” Jackson said. “That sort of piqued my interest in the royal family, and I saw how hard they worked and how interesting they were and what it meant to so many people.” He had “brief chats” with both the Queen and the Duke throughout that visit. It left him with a lasting impression of the deep connection between the sovereign and her subjects. “I think I’d always had an interest in the way Canada was governed and the Crown,” Jackson explained. “I was always sympathetic to it. But it didn’t really strike me — the importance, the interest of the institution — until I joined the Saskatchewan government in 1978.” Jackson got a photo and a pair of cufflinks out of the visit. He also got a permanent job, first as an intergovernmental affairs officer, and then as the province’s chief of protocol. That meant responsibility for diplomatic, viceregal and royal visits to Saskatchewan. The first came in 1980. It was for Princess Margaret, and Jackson remembers hearing concerns. “She had this reputation of being difficult,” he said. “We found the exact opposite. She really enjoyed herself here.” He called her “vivacious and humorous” and “great fun.” Two years later came Princess Anne, who would visit Regina, Wilcox, Gravelbourg, Estevan, Alameda, Moosomin, Saskatoon and the Qu’appelle Valley in 1982. Her summer trip was the spark for two connections that would trigger turning points, both professional and personal, in Jackson’s life. Jackson helped arrange the first. Anne became the colonel in chief of the Royal Regina Rifiles, an honorary post that earned Jackson the friendship of the regiment. He was too old to join the reserves, but the Regina Rifles liked him so much they got him in anyway. He stayed with the reserves as a public affairs officer until retirement age, rising to the rank of major. That turning point led to another, this time more personal and consequential. “That’s where I met my wife, by the way; she was a second lieutenant and we met in the officers’ mess,” said Jackson. She brought him two step children, and the couple later adopted a third. As a major, he might have outranked her at the mess, but the family had a different hierarchy.
“My son used to tease, ‘Don’t be sad mom, you’re the brigadier general at home,’ ” Helen Jackson says. Jackson was busy those days. His father, then an Archbishop in the Anglican Church of Canada, ordained him as a deacon. “He would go out of the house with a clerical collar. And then he would go out with his military uniform. Then he would go out in a three-piece suit. So finally my neighbours said, ‘Well, what does your husband do?’ ” Helen said. “Oh, he’s Mr. Dress-up.” Jackson is now the longest serving deacon in the Anglican Church of Canada. He’s focused, in large part, on building bridges with the Roman Catholic Church to hold off the “fragmentation” and “demographic decline” of Christian faiths. His job as chief of protocol took centre stage though, especially in 1987, when he took the lead in preparing for the return of the Queen and the Duke. The couple were coming back from the heads of the Commonwealth meeting and due to stay in Saskatchewan for nearly a week. Jackson sometimes wonders how they managed to pull it off. “I look back now, we have the nerve to host the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for six days, little old Saskatchewan,” he said. They did pull it off, though. Jackson remembers how the royal couple was reinvigorated by a quiet weekend stay in the Qu’appelle Valley. “That weekend did them a world of good, and by Monday they were just raring to go,” he said. “And off they went, to Kamsack, Canora, all over the place.” He feels like he got to know the Queen and duke much better on that lengthy visit. “The duke could be a bit brusque sometimes. He’s a straight shooter,” Jackson said. “She’s very poised and firm, but she’s a very kind and thoughtful person. “We had a great time with them. At the end, the Queen very kindly made me a lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, which was a great surprise.” That meant a “great deal, an immense amount,” to Jackson. He called it “a great personal honour.” Jackson should know a thing or two about honours; he was the mastermind, of sorts, behind the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, which was created in 1985, after years of his advocacy. “We need to recognize talent contributions to the community, excellence. It’s a social glue,” said Jackson. “It highlights the good that is being done in society and how people could contribute professionally, politically, economically.” In 2007, he would become a member himself. Jackson would also leave his mark on Regina’s landmarks. In 1998, he became executive director of Government House Heritage Property. He helped spearhead fundraising for a major addition, the Queen Elizabeth II wing, that the Queen personally unveiled during her visit in 2005. Now, whenever he walks by the property, he feels a sense of pride. He calls the addition “the culmination of a dream.” “It’s very gratifying to go back. Every time I go to Government House … I look at that Queen Elizabeth II Wing and say, ‘This is what we did. We did this.’ ” Jackson got to know the Queen still better during that visit, the last time she was in Saskatchewan. He felt “a growing admiration for the Queen and, through her, for the system we have,” he said. “This personal, human aspect of government, I found, grew on me more and more.” He remembers her human side shone through on a day of pouring rain, in front of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building. Jackson had played a role organizing a statue that’s since become another Regina landmark: the equestrian statue of Queen Elizabeth II on her favourite horse, Burmese. “The statue of the Queen on Burmese was a great achievement,” said Jackson. “You knew she was thrilled because it was her favourite horse and it meant so much to her.” As her visit came to a close, the Queen had another surprise for Jackson. “She said, ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Jackson. I would like to offer you a promotion in the order,” he said. He accepted, of course. He would become founding president of the Royal Victorian Order Association of Canada. Retirement hasn’t slowed down Jackson much. He claims it’s taken a few things off his plate, though his wife would disagree. “She says, ‘At your age, you should be really cutting back on all this stuff,’ ” Jackson explains. “I can’t. I have to keep active.” He’s still a deacon at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada. He provides French interpretation services at conferences and legal proceedings. He just edited a book on the future of the Crown in Canada. Though he has little downtime, he manages to watch the TV series “the Crown.” He finds it “very, very well done.” “Princess Margaret, I think, was exaggerated,” he admits. Jackson doesn’t need to watch Netflix to peer into the royal household, though. Every four years, he gets an invitation to Windsor Castle. All the members of the Royal Victorian Order come, if they’re able, and the Queen walks around chatting with them one by one. “It’s very informal. It’s like a family gathering,” Jackson said. He thinks back to their 2015 meeting. “We talked about the statue and the rainy day in Saskatchewan,” he said. “It’s quite an attraction now, your Majesty.” As 80 years creeps up on him, Jackson thinks about how he got here. It feels like “a series of accidents,” he says. He was going to live a quiet life in academia, after all, before it all got “sidetracked” by that royal train. “Life takes strange turns.”