Posted by Richard Toporoski
on July 8, 2009, 9:15 pm, in reply to "Re: New sightings of Queen's Portrait in Public Places ? Members' reports "
24.85.239.253
While in Rome at the end of June, I made a point of visiting the Canadian Embassy to the Holy See when I discovered it right on the Via della Conciliazione leading to St Peter's Basilica (I don't know where the Canadian Embassy to Italy is), and found that a portrait of the Governor General faces one as one steps in, while portraits of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs are on the opposite wall by the door. There is no portrait of the Queen.
Back in the '90s, on a visit in Paris, I made a point of visiting the Canadian Embassy to France, to discover that here also there was no portrait of the Queen. I mentioned this to the woman behind the reception desk. As I recall, she offered little reaction until, while I was a few yards away reading news from Canada, another woman came in and the two engaged in a conversation full of chuckles in which, with my poor French, I could catch only a couple of mentions of "la Reine". I surmised that they were commenting on the goofy Canadian who had just come in and complained that there was no portrait of the Queen.
In the case of the Canadian Embassy to the Holy See, I did not have the guts to say anything. Since the Queen of Canada no longer sends ambassadors, nor are they sent in her name, on what basis can one complain if her portrait is not displayed in a diplomatic mission, but only the portrait of the person who actually accredited and sent the ambassador?
I might mention here that, as I am sure many Canadians visiting Britain have noticed, there is also no portrait of the Queen in Canada House on Trafalgar Square in London, although the Queen's opening of the refurbished building is commemorated on a big plaque paralleling the plaque which records the original opening by King George V. I have not been inside Macdonald House in Grosvenor Square, the other part of the Canadian High Commission in London, in decades, but when I was there in the '80s renewing my passport, there was a small picture of the Queen in that office.
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