“Perceptions,” by Sandra Albers Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Without giving away my age, let’s just say that Queen Elizabeth II, whose passing we are mourning this week, became queen the same year I was born. OK, let’s not be coy. The year was 1952 and, 70 years later, I celebrated my 2022 birthday right about the time Her Majesty celebrated her Platinum Jubilee marking 70 years on the throne.

In other words, until her death on September 8, the queen had been the queen all my life.

Since that announcement, I’ve been glued to the virtually non-stop television coverage (even on the American channels!) and can’t count how many times I’ve heard the inevitable cliché phrases like “it’s the end of an era” and “the queen is dead; long live the king.”

When I started this column, I wasn’t sure I could add anything new to the conversation, yet I felt the need to try. Yes, she was 96. Yes, we knew she had been in failing health. But, like so many, I was still gutted when I heard the news.

So, trying to make sense of it all, I started recalling my own royal connections (besides being born the same year Elizabeth ascended to the throne).

One of those connections dates to May 3, 1986. I was working as entertainment editor at the Kamloops News, and we were covering the whistle-stop royal visit of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Newsroom staff were stationed at various spots in the city; I had special permission to sit in the seniors’ area to take in the royal couple’s walkabout.

The idea was to eavesdrop on whatever comment, no matter how banal, I might catch Charles or Diana saying, get a few quotes from the seniors in my assigned spot, scribbling furiously in my notebook all the while, then fashion a very quick story on a very tight deadline, since this special edition of the newspaper was to be delivered to subscribers’ doorsteps the very same day. (Oh, those were the days!)

I still have that copy of the paper in my personal archives. What I reported was far from earth-shattering but, in the context of recent events, it was, perhaps, illuminating.

I quoted Dorothy Romig, then 78, who said of Prince Charles: “He will make a wonderful king . . . He’s so human.”

Elizabeth Maud Paterson, then 92, added, “He’s got good backing from his mother.”

I must admit I teared up a little when I read those words written so long ago. Because I think those two old ladies, now long gone, were spot on. Charles, now King Charles III, comes to his new job as the son of a remarkable woman who gave him a “good backing” indeed. It will serve him well and I like to think that the prediction from 1986 that he will make “a wonderful king” was nothing but prescient.

By the way, my memory of Diana that day was that she was even taller in real life than you expected her to be, and that she was very, very pale. (She was to faint a few days later while touring Expo 86 in Vancouver. We didn’t know then, as we do now, that she was suffering from bulimia at the time).

Another personal royal connection? Well, 25 years ago, in late August 1997, my husband Gerry and I, with our two kids, were in the process of moving to the Kootenays from Whitehorse when we heard the shocking news of Diana’s death in that terrible car crash in that dark Paris tunnel. One of the first events we attended in Cranbrook was a special church service at Christ Church Anglican to mark the tragedy and celebrate Diana’s too short life.

Well, Queen Elizabeth had a good long life. I’ll leave the last word on her to my daughter Stephanie, which she sent in an email:

“Regardless of how you feel about The Firm, she symbolized duty, stoicism and tireless service, qualities very much lacking in our narcissistic age.” Out of the mouths of millennials, eh?

King Charles III has his chance now to make his own mark on the monarchy while honoring his “darling mama’s” legacy. Long live the King.

Sandra Albers is a retired journalist, who spends the majority of her time now looking after Gerry and proofreading his column.

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