The Queen Mother (158 page)

That afternoon she went to Molson Stadium to see Trooping the Colour by the Black Watch. Colonel Victor Chartier, at that time the commanding officer, later recalled her impressive knowledge of the regiment’s history. Talking to one veteran, she said, ‘You weren’t always with the Black Watch, were you?’ She had seen the Italy Medal
on his chest and she knew the Black Watch had not served there. She was right: the soldier had transferred temporarily to the Signallers, with whom he had been in Italy.
²⁷

After a regimental dinner at the Reine Elizabeth Hotel she passed a room where French Canadian high-school students were having a graduation party to noisy discotheque music. To the alarm of her flagging Household she asked to go in. The students recognized her at once and gathered around cheering, ‘Vive la Reine.’ She emerged a few minutes later, dancing.
²⁸

Before she left the city on 8 June the Queen Mother thanked all ten of her motorcycle escorts in French, and posed for photographs with them.
²⁹
Her reception in Montreal had broken the ice in Quebec. When the Queen visited the city in October, she was given a friendly welcome.
³⁰
No one doubted that Queen Elizabeth’s earlier venture had helped to ease the Queen’s way.

*

Q
UEEN
E
LIZABETH
’
S
last trip to Canada took place shortly before her eighty-ninth birthday. It was part of a crowded summer: she had inaugurated two new oilfields – Tern and Eider – at Aberdeen, made a private visit to the Languedoc in France and celebrated the tenth anniversary of becoming lord warden of the Cinque Ports with a visit to Dover in
Britannia
. At the end of the ceremonies she sailed in the royal yacht for France, disembarked at Caen and drove to Bayeux, where she unveiled a memorial window in the Cathedral and laid a wreath at the 50th (Northumbria) Division Memorial, commemorating the D-Day landings. In June she visited Oxford to mark the University’s development programme, went to Tyne Tees Television in Newcastle and visited Hadrian’s Wall to open a National Trust hostel. On 16 June she gave a reception at Clarence House for members of the French Resistance and the RAF Escaping Society and made a visit to RAF Scampton to see the RAF Central Flying School.

Then on 5 July she boarded a Canadian Armed Forces Boeing 707 to Ottawa. This trip had originally been envisaged to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the historic tour she had made with the King just before the outbreak of war. On arrival in Ottawa, in fierce heat, she was driven through the city in the open Buick that she and the King had used in 1939, for an official welcome on Parliament Hill. At tea with the Governor General afterwards she cut a birthday cake with
the same knife she had used to cut a cake fifty years before. The ride back to the airport, in a modern car with a low seat and a small window, was less pleasant. Frances Campbell-Preston, who had been her lady in waiting on all her Canadian visits since 1967, recorded ‘Poor Queen Elizabeth has to sit very bolt upright & wave frantically. Window sealed as car bullet proof and air conditioned. It’s
extremely
tiring for her.’
³¹
They flew that evening to Toronto where, fortunately, she had been lent the comfortable home of Galen and Hilary Weston, friends of the Royal Family who were frequent guests at Royal Lodge.
^*

Next day, after a gargantuan civic luncheon, she had a long, humid afternoon inspecting a combined guard of honour of her two regiments, the Toronto Scottish and the Black Watch of Canada. She talked at length to the soldiers and as a result she was quite a long time in the heat without shade or water.
³²
In London, Ontario, the following day, after another long hot lunch and an enjoyable meeting with veterans, it was on to Sir Frederick S. Banting Square to unveil a statue of the man who had discovered insulin in 1922 and thus saved the lives of millions of diabetics thereafter. She lit an ‘eternal flame’ to his memory.
^†

On Saturday 8 July there was yet another long luncheon in Toronto, this time with the officers of her regiments, then a tiring walkabout among the soldiers and some impromptu sightseeing. That evening, after a reception for her regiments and an enjoyable dinner with the Ontario Jockey Club, she met all the Club Trustees, two by two, over liqueurs and coffee. With the final pair, David Willmot and Bob Anderson, a young Aberdeen Angus cattle breeder, she talked and talked about her favourite cattle as she plied them with Drambuie. She told them of an alarming experience she had once had in a landau on an English racecourse; the coachman lost control of the team of horses and they ran on and on for three circuits. What did she do? Willmot
asked. She just gave the spectators a royal wave each time she went past the stands, she replied.
³³

Queen Elizabeth’s last Canadian engagement, appropriately, was at the races – attending the 130th running of the Queen’s Plate Stakes at the Woodbine racetrack that afternoon. The next day the royal party flew back to London. ‘The tour had been punishing for HM at moments,’ Dame Frances recorded; ‘but she is
so
loved and venerated in Canada that it was impossible not to be buoyed up by the enthusiasm of so many nice people.’
³⁴
Canadian officials and politicians asked for yet another visit in the early 1990s. The Queen was consulted and came to the reluctant decision that eighty-nine was old enough for such adventures. Thus the long and happy saga of Queen Elizabeth’s trips to Canada came to an end in her ninth decade.
³⁵

*

I
N
1990,
LUNCHEONS
, dinners, garden parties and other events were held all over the kingdom in honour of Queen Elizabeth’s ninetieth birthday. Among them were celebrations organized by the Lord Mayor of London, by the Black Watch in Northern Ireland, by the Queen and Prince Philip at Holyrood. The tributes were substantial – it is probable that most of those who took part did not expect her to complete another decade.

The highlight came on 27 June 1990 when, accompanied by the Prince of Wales and Princess Margaret, she rode in a carriage to Horse Guards Parade, for a procession of tableaux in her honour. This was organized by Major Michael Parker, of the Queen’s Own Hussars (one of her regiments), who had been planning military and royal events for many years. This time the display included many of the hundreds of organizations – military, medical, social, cultural, animal – that she patronized.
³⁶

Queen Elizabeth inspected the parade while Princess Margaret and the Prince of Wales watched together from a window overlooking Horse Guards Parade. The Queen was away on an official trip to Iceland and Princess Margaret wrote to tell
her
sister of the event, saying that their mother was ‘looking very
her
in blue, while the choir, orchestra & massed bands played & sang “I was Glad” so of course Charles and I were sobbing’.
³⁷

The Princess gave the Queen a spirited description of the soldiers and the civilians marching gamely on behind.

Then there was ‘a
glorious
noise’ from the massed bands, a march-past by the King’s Troop, and a fly-past by a Lancaster, a Hurricane, a Spitfire and the Red Arrows; all in all ‘it was stupendous and I
wish
you had been there.’
³⁸

After the parade, when she arrived home at Clarence House Queen Elizabeth was pleased to see her racing manager Michael Oswald holding up a sign to tell her that the Queen’s horse Starlet had won a race by eight lengths. So the day ended especially well. Later she said that one of its joys had been to see the Sandringham Women’s Institute marching by. ‘The sight of Mrs Beamis, Mrs Emmerson, Mrs Candy, Mrs Hall, Mrs Rispin and Mrs Whittaker stepping out bravely to the rousing tune of Blaydon Races was a great sight.’
³⁹

The celebrations continued. Queen Elizabeth gave audiences and received gifts and loyal birthday addresses from both Houses of Parliament at Clarence House. She embarked in the royal yacht at Portsmouth on 30 July and reviewed at least a thousand small yachts and boats which came out to greet her in the Solent. On 1 August
Britannia
sailed up the Thames, through Tower Bridge and into the
Pool of London. That afternoon, Queen Elizabeth drove around parts of the East End. She was touched that she was still greeted with intense affection half a century after she and the King had comforted people under German attack there. After a reception, a family dinner on board and fireworks, she slept in
Britannia
, returning to Clarence House the next day. That night Prince Charles gave a concert in her honour at Buckingham Palace.

The day before her ninetieth birthday, 3 August, was the hottest day recorded since 1911; Queen Elizabeth said she remembered clearly the heat of that distant summer.
⁴⁰
On her birthday itself, she spent an hour in the sun collecting flowers from well-wishers. Lunch with her family was followed by a ballet gala at Covent Garden and then dinner with Ruth Fermoy at her flat – a long day. Then she flew to Mey where she settled down to the pleasure of reading Ted Hughes’s poetic tribute.

The 1990s were to be much harder.

*

A
T THE END
of 1991, as the Queen approached the fortieth anniversary of her accession to the throne, she used her Christmas broadcast to reflect upon the momentous changes that had taken place during her reign, and particularly upon the recent fall of communism in eastern Europe where the people had ‘broken the mould of autocracy’.

The fall of communism had an impact within Britain too. For decade after decade established politicians and pedagogues had expressed far greater enthusiasm for the work of centralized state powers than for that of voluntary associations. By the early 1990s the patronages of the Royal Family – including Queen Elizabeth and those younger members whose marital difficulties the press remorselessly chronicled – amounted to almost 3,500 organizations.

In her Christmas broadcast, the Queen said that she was ‘constantly amazed by the generosity of donors and subscribers, great and small, who give so willingly and often towards the enjoyment of others. Without them … voluntary organizations would not exist.’ She believed that voluntary service was the bedrock of Britain’s democratic way of life and she pledged to continue the royal tradition of public service she had inherited and her own personal commitment to the nation.

The Queen’s steady determination was reinforced by that of her
mother. Indeed, throughout her nineties, despite increasing frailty, Queen Elizabeth continued to work for the organizations to which she had pledged herself. At a time of life when most people do almost nothing she willed herself to carry on. Physically this became more and more of a struggle, but she knew and would consider no other way.

That March she undertook her usual, pleasant responsibility to the Irish Guards and flew to Berlin to present them with shamrock on St Patrick’s Day. In May she undertook another task that was close to her heart, flying for the day to Valençay in central France to unveil a memorial to the F (France) Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
^*
She had always admired the courage of the secret agents of SOE charged by Churchill in 1940 to ‘set Europe ablaze’ behind enemy lines. The men and women of SOE were sometimes known as Churchill’s Secret Army and she had become patron of their discreet association, the Special Forces Club, in London. On this occasion, the fiftieth anniversary of the first SOE agent being dropped into France in May 1941, Queen Elizabeth took her piper, Pipe Major King, with her and he played ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ at the memorial ceremony. During the rest of 1991 she carried out seventy-five other public engagements at home during the year, while attending as many race meetings as ever, entertaining and being entertained by her friends, and taking her usual holidays in Scotland.

On 30 October she lunched, with her daughters, at Ascot racecourse, to celebrate her 400th winner under National Hunt Rules, Nearco Bay. Several hundred people attended this happy occasion, including all the jockeys who had ridden for her. Several of her favourite horses were paraded. On 25 November she flew by helicopter to Portsmouth to visit the aircraft carrier HMS
Ark Royal
. As with the previous
Ark Royal
, which she had launched in 1950, she felt a great attachment to this ship. Indeed she looked upon both
Ark Royal
and HMS
Resolution
, the first Polaris submarine, which she had launched in 1966, very much as she did on her regiments – as an extension of
family for which she was responsible. She often visited both ships over the years, particularly when they were in dock for recommissioning; she had also visited
Ark Royal
three times at sea, landing on deck by helicopter. Their captains kept in touch with her.

After the customary family holiday at Sandringham over Christmas and the New Year of 1992, which she described to the Queen as ‘better than ten bottles of tonic or twenty bottles of Arnica’,
⁴¹
she acted as Counsellor of State during the Queen’s absence in Australia. In March 1992, she attended the service and final parade of the Women’s Royal Army Corps in Guildford: the WRAC was to be incorporated into the army. As so often when her regiments were disbanded, she was not only sad but felt strongly that it was a wrong decision that would be regretted in the future.
⁴²