2011 will be remembered in Canada as the year of a royal wedding for a future King and Queen and for the honour of hosting them here on their first overseas visit.

Canada welcomed another popular royal couple in 1939 – Prince William’s great-grandparents– King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. It was the first time that a reigning British monarch set foot in any of “the overseas Dominions.” Their Majesties landed at Quebec on May 17. Canadian journalist Robert K. Carnegie, who travelled with the Royals throughout their visit, reported that with guns thundering a royal salute, and the crowd of thousands cheering in a volume that nearly drowned the roar of the artillery, Her Majesty, eyes gleaming, was heard to say to the King: “I think they like us.”

Stratford Mayor Thomas E. Henry chaired a Royal Visit committee that spent five months organizing the local programme, supervising decorations, and arranging for the red-carpeted reception platform. The main event that June day was at the Stratford train station where citizens were formally presented to the King and Queen, representing the counties of Perth, Huron and Bruce along with the city of Stratford, the Perth Regiment and war veterans. The headline in the late edition of the newspaper that day summed it up nicely: “Royal Pair Wins Hearts of All– Perth, Huron and Bruce Join in Rapturous Welcome.” It was an extremely busy day for Their Majesties. Carnegie wrote that “possibly more people saw Their Majesties this day than any other on Canadian tour. They passed through rich farming and industrial communities of Western Ontario – Guelph, Kitchener, Stratford, and Windsor. Back to London late at night. At all these and many intervening stations crowds massed along the tracks.” On the return trip across the Atlantic, His Majesty commented happily “I think we must have seen everybody in Canada.”

In the end, a glimpse of the luxurious train was all that many who had gathered in Stratford would have to remember of the royal visit. The train did not proceed through the city at a “walking pace” with the King and Queen in the rear observation coach as had been hoped. Thousands of school children from the surrounding district and others who had gathered along the route out of site of the train station were greatly disappointed. Perth County’s own James Reaney captured their mixed feelings in his delightful poem The Royal Visit:

although we didn’t see them in any way
(I didn’t even catch the glimpse
The teacher who was taller did
Of a gracious pink figure)
I’ll remember it to my dying day

Admirers who gathered elsewhere to watch the train pass were luckier. As Reaney wrote in the same poem:

some people up the line at Shakespeare
Stayed in Shakespeare, just in case–

More than two thousand people there “caught a glimpse of their beautiful smiles which will always be remembered.” A large photograph of the Queen smiling down on the “cheering and happy throng” at St. Marys Junction appeared in the paper as well.

In the acclaimed movie The King’s Speech, George VI struggles to overcome a stammer. The movie culminates in the dramatic speech broadcast on September 3, 1939. The King had also spoken to the Empire from Canada earlier that year. After messages of loyalty to His Majesty were aired from all the Dominions on May 24, He replied from Winnipeg saying that He welcomed “this opportunity of sharing with my subjects in all parts of the world some of the thoughts and feelings” that the trip across Canada had inspired. He closed by reminding his listeners that:

Life is a great adventure and every one of you can be a pioneer, blazing by thoughts and service a trail to better things... Remember too that the key to all true progress lies in faith, hope and love.

by Betty Jo Belton, Archivist, Stratford-Perth Archives