Posted by Jerry Wong on September 16, 2009, 4:12 pm, in reply to "Re: QOTW: How will you find out the views of your ridings' candidates in any upcoming federal election?"
Message modified by board administrator September 16, 2009, 4:29 pm
Ahah! Here we go!
Vincent is responding to a poll his friend pointed to in his first point and to the general idea of removing the Queen and her representatives.
Also, he is a Liberal so he wrote it as such.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this idea.
(1) For one thing, the only possible goal of any such effort is to beat our chests about how great Canada is. The idea of having a Queen does not impact the daily lives of any Canadian at this moment. The poll that you were referring to (the CBC one) did not ask on what level that people care about the issue (ie: do people care a lot or do people moderately care, or do they not care at all ?). It's something to fill time and space with. If we polled Canadians again and looked at how many people really cared about this issue we'd find most of that support you spoke of fall away.
Anyone if asked if they like Canada, will say so. Anyone who is asked if they support Canadian sovereignty will say "yes." However, to remove a symbol that has neither power nor control aside from its historical value is something Canadians will likely shrug off or be indifferent to. I'm almost positive about this.
And the idea that Canadians have no connection to the next in line to the throne is rather daft. Ask anyone about Princess Diana, with her and Lloyd Axworthy fighting for the Ottawa Treaty, and you'll get a huge surge of opinion. Ask anyone above the age of 40 about the Royal Family's importance, too.
(2) We have laws and traditions spanning from the Magna Carta to this very day. The Magna Carta was formulated in 1215 in England by nobles and the then King of England, John. There is an tremendous amount of tradition centering on the monarchy, parliament (it wasn't called by this name until later), and the basic rights of those people that the Kings and Queens of England ruled over. To separate oneself from this tradition may call into question some of the veracity of the claims that we inherited from way back when.
Adding onto this, we would be negating the inalienable rights that have been garnered over the centuries in England. To commit regicide in Canada, and to split our country from the huge amount of history that we have been blessed to have inherited, is something quite ghastly.
(3) I happen to like the Queen, thank you very much. Same with the Princes.
(4) Personally, to have some history and some greater continuum to which I inherited is a huge part of who I am. I am a ninth generation Albertan with three British coats of arms in my family; I have ancestors from the Czech Republic, England, Scotland, France, and Spain; and I have ancestors that stretch back to the days that William the Conquerer took the Crown of England for himself. It tells me who I was at point zero and what legacy I have inherited.
England, and later the United Kingdom, did this by emphasizing that it was the inheritor of ancient Rome's legacy. Read up on it. The UK was one of the last places touched by Rome, but it was one of the places untouched afterwards and it was allowed to--according to Whig history--keep a purity of Roman heritage in it. Check out some English art of the period, and the religious monuments of the early 19th century--there's a lot of linkages that artists and historians make toward linking the UK and Rome.
To wholeheartedly cut ourselves off from our own Rome, the UK, might just place us in the same boat as someone who hasn't been left a documented and spoken about history like England. Canada might just imagine another, wholly different, ancestor to admire... like the USA."
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