Posted by Ian McKechnie on September 21, 2009, 8:12 pm, in reply to "Qotw: What, and how, did you learn about our monarchy in High School?"
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An excellent question.
Until my Grade 5 Canadian politics lessons, I didn't realise the position of the Sovereign in our system of government. It was not until middle school and early high school that I began to appreciate the truly Canadian character of the monarchy.
Some of what I was taught:
- In Gr. 9 Geography, we were told by our teacher (in a rather exasperated tone, I thought) that "the Queen comes over, but we're independent," as if having a non-resident constitutional monarch was a block to Canadian independence.
- My Gr. 10 Civics text pointed out the monarchy briefly, saying "though we have our own constitution, we still recognise the British monarch as our own monarch and head of state." It then went on to describe the Canadian Crown as a "tradition" and nothing more was said about the Crown throughout the remainder of the text.
- In what has so far been first year university, I heard a fellow point out that "if Canada hadn't become a country, we would still be owned by the British Crown."
The word "still" is troubling. It implies to students that the Canadian Crown is somehow archaic. It is the government's job to make the Crown more visible, the publisher's job to get textbook information right, and the media's job to keep republican sentiments quiet.
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