A Canadian View on the Coronation

Prince Charles will finally be crowned King of England and various and sundry realms tomorrow. I'm tempted to say I couldn't care less, but that's not quite true. While having the King of England as the Canadian head of state has little practical impact on my life, it does matter. It's a relic of a bygone time and should be done away with. I'd like to see Canadians choose their own head of state with no legal ties to Britain. Perhaps we could have it written into our constitution that the head of state must be a person from the First Nations, to remind us of the true roots of this country.

The Guardian just published a long article about the coronation written by Stephen Marché, a Canadian, and author of The Next Civil War. He looks at the coronation from a Canadian perspective and examines the current state of Britain after Brexit. 

Say it out loud and try not to snicker: “The coronation of Charles the Third.”

In a time of post-post-colonialism, of anti-racist iconoclasm, a time in which the very notion of gender as a legitimate distinction is contested, and Christianity has been reduced to a scandal management system with costumes, a 74-year-old British gentleman will ride a fancy carriage to an old church where a few other elderly British gentlemen in gilded dresses will declare him emperor, patriarch and head of state because God says so.

You might think you live in a time of truth and reconciliation, or perhaps even, if you’re feeling optimistic, progress. But this week if you’re British or a member of the 56 sovereign states that still, somehow, find themselves in the Commonwealth, you’re waking up in a country where a priest is going to smear oil – vegan oil from Jerusalem – on a rather pinkish, rather broad forehead to signify one man’s status as the Lord’s anointed.

During the course of the article he discusses a swanky gathering to unveil  a portrait of Charles, the business of selling coronation memorabilia, mudlarking for buried treasure on the banks of the Thames, a great uncle who died in Word War I, Meghan Markle and her time in Toronto, how Brexit has divided the country and how Britain's relationship with Europe compares to Canada's relationship to the United States, and Charles' sense of humour (apparently he does have one). 

It's an excellent essay, one of the best I've read in a long time.