After Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the British throne seven decades ago, a newly elected Canadian prime minister invited her to make her first visit as monarch to perform a formality — delivering the speech that officially opens Canada’s Parliament.
The prime minister, John Diefenbaker, hoped the symbolism of her 1957 trip would help revive the monarchy’s profile, which had begun fading after World War II. (When Canada was formed in 1867, it retained many ties to Britain, including adopting that country’s monarch as its own sovereign and head of state.)
Now, another newly elected prime minister, Mark Carney, has asked King Charles III to follow his mother’s lead by traveling to Canada, his first visit to the country since he ascended to the throne in 2022, to open its Parliament.
Mr. Carney’s invitation is also driven by symbolism. But this time, the royal visit is a symbol of Canadian sovereignty and the country’s distinct heritage from the United States, at a time when President Trump has repeatedly called for Canada to become the 51st U.S. state.
“Canada has a steadfast defender in our sovereign,” Mr. Carney said this month when he announced the king’s visit.
The trip was hurriedly arranged when Mr. Carney visited Britain days after leading the Liberal Party to victory in a federal election. Despite the brevity of the king’s trip — he will spend two days in Ottawa, arriving Monday and departing Tuesday — there will be no shortage of pageantry and pomp.
Why is Charles coming?
Charles is Canada’s official head of state. But in 1947 the monarch’s duties were largely delegated to a governor-general, a role currently held by Mary Simon, the first Indigenous person to be appointed to the position.
One of the governor-general’s responsibilities is to open new sessions of Parliament with the reading of “the speech from the throne.”
Its presentation is more ceremonial and solemn than the more raucous mood that surrounds the State of the Union addresses given by American presidents to Congress.
While King Charles will deliver the speech as if it were his own words, it will actually be written by the prime minister’s office. It will broadly lay out the government’s legislative plans and likely mirror Mr. Carney’s campaign speeches. It is expected to contain, in careful diplomatic language, an assertion of Canada’s sovereignty.
This will be the third time a monarch has opened a session of Canada’s Parliament. Queen Elizabeth did it a second time in 1977.
Why has this king been playing diplomat?
For King Charles, the trip to Canada, where he will be accompanied by Queen Camilla, is his latest foray into the realm of diplomatic symbolism. In February, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain harnessed the king’s star power by delivering an embossed letter from Charles to Mr. Trump, inviting the American president to make a rare second state visit to Britain.
Less than a week later, Charles hosted President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, after Mr. Zelensky’s bitter exchange with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. While the king, by custom, stays out of politics, his warm welcome of Mr. Zelensky reinforced Europe’s embrace of the Ukrainian leader after his falling-out with the American president.
Charles has also had an unusual amount of face time with Canadian leaders recently.
A day after meeting Mr. Zelensky, the king welcomed Justin Trudeau, the former Canadian prime minister, to his country estate. Mr. Trudeau said in a social media post that they had discussed “matters of importance to Canadians — including, above all, Canada’s sovereign and independent future.”
What are some rituals during the king’s visit?
Because parliamentary tradition bars the monarch from the House of Commons, the speech will be read in the chamber of the appointed Senate, Canada’s version of the House of Lords.
On Tuesday, Charles and Camilla will arrive at a former railway station that houses the temporary Senate chamber in a ceremonial carriage drawn by horses from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It will be escorted by other horses from an equestrian performance group that is also part of the national police force.
The royal couple will be met by a 100-person honor guard and a military band, and they will be given a 21-gun salute as the Canadian flag on the Senate building is replaced with a banner that indicates the king’s presence.
What do Canadians think of Charles?
While polls have long showed strong support and respect for Queen Elizabeth in Canada, Charles was deeply unpopular while he was the next in line to the throne.
But the near impossibility of amending Canada’s Constitution meant there was also no movement to end the monarchy in Canada following the queen’s death.
After Charles’s divorce from Princess Diana, crowds were often sparse during his visits to Canada. Many recent immigrants to Canada come from areas like South Asia, where the British Crown is widely seen as a symbol of colonial oppression.
The monarchy has long been deeply unpopular among many French-speaking residents of Quebec.
In fact, while May 19 is a holiday in many parts of Canada, commemorating Queen Victoria’s birth, in Quebec, the holiday marks something different. There, it is called National Patriots’ Day and commemorates an armed rebellion in 1837 against the British colonial government in part of what became Quebec.
A Quebec nationalist group called the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal cast this year’s holiday as a protest over King Charles’s visit.
“Mark Carney is taking us backward by imposing the image of an all-powerful king,” Marie-Anne Alepin, the group’s president, said in a statement. “This shows an unacceptable disregard for the desire of Quebecers to free themselves from this harmful old institution.”
What does the king have to do with street hockey?
After arriving in Ottawa on Monday afternoon, the king and queen will travel to a former fairgrounds in the city’s center that is now a sports and shopping complex to tour a farmer’s market and take in musical performances. Charles will also do a ceremonial ball drop for a street hockey game.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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