Do Canadians care about the King’s coronation?
There’s another royal event happening that should have Canadians abuzz, but, nah, not really.
The coronation of King Charles (anybody else still default to calling him Prince Charles like I do?) is set to take place this weekend though it’s expected to have less fanfare than the Queen’s Jubilee last year. And many of you are probably thinking: the Jubilee was only a year ago? Seems longer. Exactly!
That is, of course, because Canadians, for the most part, had no interest in celebrating the Queen. In fact, our federal government was criticized for not creating more, well, jubilation for the Jubilee.
Months before the official Jubilee schedule of events was announced, my radio producers reached out to the Governor General’s media relations team to see what sort of coverage and/or access we could get for our syndicated programming. It was crickets from that office. We continually – and maybe aggressively – followed up every couple of weeks. We got one press release a few days before the Jubilee and it was nothing that we could cover in London with little notice.
On the flip side, because Canadians don’t seem to care about the royals, it could be said that most taxpayers wouldn’t want their money used to celebrate a king who has no impact on our day-to-day lives. (Truthfully, even though QE2 is dead, I think many people still consider her to be the Queen and not Charles as King.)
So, will the coronation have Canadians wide awake and tuned in at 3 a.m. Central time as did the weddings of Prince William and Harry, and Queen’s funeral? Not likely but you never know.
I happened to be in Louisiana taping travel programming during Harry’s wedding and I think Americans were more into it than Canadians — though that could’ve been because Harry was marrying an American. The morning of the ceremony, the hotel’s restaurant and bar had TVs set up and English-style breakfasts and beer served. In Canada? There was a bit of that in Ottawa. And random Lafayette, La. had festivities. Go figure.
Admittedly, most Canadians haven’t been anxiously excited and talking non-stop about the coronation. The only reason I’m thinking about it is because I just had a meeting about how early I have to be awake covering the entertainment side of things this weekend.
If not for that, I wouldn’t give two flying figs about the event and certainly wouldn’t sacrifice sleeping in on a Saturday for it.
Maybe Canadians can rally together and feel a sense of patriotism by showing how much we don’t care for this event that means nothing to us!
