Posted by Ian McKechnie on April 20, 2012, 10:27 am, in reply to "Re: GG to participate in Jubilee events in Barbados"
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I think the media (the CBC in particular) will provide more in-depth coverage of the Diamond Jubilee in due course. The reason I worry about their portraying the Jubilee as being a primarily British event is because their "behaviour" during the 2009, 2010, and 2011 royal tours (along with last year's royal wedding) suggests that they are clearly more interested in portraying the Crown as being a primarily British institution with only "historical" relevance in Canada. If the CBC, for example, has to rely on British biographers of the Queen, their own London correspondent, and an Englishwoman who once wrote for Hello! Canada (go figure) to explain the monarchy to Canadians, it becomes obvious that a "let's play up the 'Britishness' of the monarchy so as to incite a controversy about its relevance to Canada" debate is at work. There are plenty of people in Canada (not least the Queen's eleven representatives or the folks who contributed to The Evolving Canadian Crown, among other scholarly works on the institution) who are just as capable, if not more so, of explaining the monarchy to Canadians without having to make reference to who designed the Queen's outfits.
As far as royal tours are concerned, it is interesting that rumours of a post-wedding royal tour were swirling around in January of last year, an official announcement was made in February, and an itinerary of sorts was revealed in May - all well ahead of the tour in late June of 2011. The last we heard about a royal tour in 2012 was in December of last year. No further announcements have been made as of yet, which makes me wonder if the government is somehow gazing into its crystal ball and wondering about how successful it will be.
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