Local monarchists overjoyed
Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge’s child will be third in line to the throne
“The phone has been ringing since 9 a.m. this morning and our Facebook and our Twitter pages have just been going non-stop,” he said. “They want plates, cups, ashtrays — whatever they can get their hands on. I told them, ‘the kid hasn’t even been born yet.’”
For now, his customers will have to make-do with commemorative buttons. While there will be a glut of knock-off royal swag that will hit the internet in the hours following Monday’s announcement, the authentic British memorabilia will be tougher to get your hands on immediately, Labelle said.
“As long as there is a huge demand there (in Britain), it’s going to be hard to get this stuff. When the royal wedding happened … you couldn’t beg, borrow or steal a Union Jack flag during the royal wedding in the UK,” he said.
“As soon as the baby is born and we get a name and a weight, as soon as that is released, the phone will start ringing and the emails will start popping in from the UK offering stuff.”
Labelle said his customers are typically split into two distinct groups. Canadians come in looking for Union Jack apparel, royal souvenirs and Dr. Who or Coronation Street goodies, while his British, expat customers are looking for scones, HobNobs, clotted cream and other treats from their homeland they can’t find elsewhere.
Brit Lorraine Haemel came into the store Monday to purchase Bourbon Creams cookies. A secretary with the local public school board, Haemel has been living in Canada since 1976 but said she still feels a strong kinship to Britain, the royal family and British cuisine.
And with the Britain's Christopher Froome winning the Tour de France and Scotland’s Andy Murray taking home the championship in Wimbledon, it has been an exciting month for those with UK roots, she added.
Haemal admitted she had caught “baby fever” and had been following the BBC Twitter feed closely Monday for any news of the royal birth. She planned to celebrate with a cake.
“We just love the royals and want to celebrate. It’s exciting that there is a royal baby on the way. We tend to feel a little bit of ownership,” she said.
Marjorie Shephard, the secretary of the Peterborough branch of the Monarchist League of Canada, said news of the future king or queen was all the talk at her morning tai chi class.
While the league’s local membership has dwindled to about 75, fascination with the royal family remains strong in Peterborough, Shephard said.
“We’re all filled with this lovely feeling, almost as if a child of our own has been born,” she said.
“It’s all a part of who we are and we share in that. It is a part of our heritage, our history and where we’re from.”
The anti-monarch movement in Canada remains strong, but Shephard said the young, attractive, new royal blood is luring in new Canadian royalwatchers.
“They are young, they are exciting, they are very good to look at and lovely to listen to and their enthusiasm is catching,” she said. “We certainly have a lot of grim news, so it’s nice to have something happy.”