It was business as usual this Canada Day— July 1. “Queen Hails
Canada’s Diversity,” said the headline in the Montreal Gazette. The
Toronto Globe and Mail agreed: “Diversity of Country and People
Amazing, Monarch Tells Ottawa Crowds.” Yes, indeed, as Her Majesty
put it in her Canada Day address, “The diversity of the country and
the people never fails to amaze me.”
She also said: “In that diversity lies much strength.”
And in case we still hadn’t got it: “Celebrate the unique Canadian
ability to turn diversity to the common good.”
By this stage, a few of us were pining for a little more diversity in
vocabulary—not the queen’s fault, but that of her Canadian
ministers, who draft her speeches. It would be fun to sit in on their
brainstorming sessions: “How about ‘Celebrate the diversity of our
tolerance’?” “No, we did that last year. Let’s go with ‘Celebrate
the tolerance of our diversity.’ Or ‘Tolerate the celebration of our
diversity.’”
By Canada Day, the queen was probably reaching the limits of her own
tolerance. While most of the world’s press had decamped to Hong
Kong to mark the alleged setting of the sun on the British Empire,
Canada’s head of state was in Newfoundland, to mark the
five-hundredth
anniversary of John Cabot’s landing. In other words, the queen was
subtly reminding us that, whatever the ironies in Communism’s last
conscripts being seven million British subjects delivered up to the
butchers of Tiananmen, Hong
