Prince Charles stepping off of an airplane(Image credit: Canadian Press)

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: Thoughts for a long weekend – museums, Charles and what’s in a name

May 21, 2022 | 7:53 AM

SOME SCATTERED THOUGHTS for a long weekend. A couple of kids were walking past the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria the other day. One girl was about 12, the other about 14.

“Yeah, it’s going to be a billion dollars,” said one.

“I wish I had a billion dollars,” said the other, “because then I could afford a house.” Peter Milobar told that story this week.

The Kamloops-North Thompson MLA happened to be walking in front of the girls at the time and couldn’t help but overhear them. The conversation nicely sums up what the whole province is talking about these days. I was part of a group that toured the new patient care tower at RIH this week and it was impossible not to point out that it cost roughly half what it would to build John Horgan’s new museum.

If the NDP government had held a weekend strategy session on how best to piss off voters and hand newly anointed BC Liberal leader Kevin Falcon a golden egg, they couldn’t have done better than this.

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What about fixing up schools? they yell. What about putting the money into healthcare for more doctors and nurses? What about gas prices? What about the housing crisis? What about crime and poverty on the streets?

The wish list for what could be done with a billion dollars — anything but tearing down the museum and building a new one in its place — is as long as imaginations can make it. But a small but interesting detail of the NDP plan seems to have escaped everyone’s attention. The government plans to rename its new museum.

I take that to mean the “Royal” will be taken out of it, maybe with an indigenous name in its place.

We’re in renaming mode right now. Anyone connected in any way with residential schools is persona non grata.

The movement now extends even to the monarchy. With Pope Francis having apologized, and coming to Canada in July to do it again, there are demands that the Queen do likewise. The monarchy is suddenly regarded as complicit, and must acknowledge its guilt.

So, maybe renaming the museum has to do with wanting to downplay Canada’s connection to the monarchy, or the fact it was around when residential schools were established, or both. Certainly, our relationship with the monarchy has become somewhat tenuous.

Queen Charlotte City has decided to rename itself Daajing Giids. It’s an ancestral Haida name so the change is more about reconciliation than the monarchy, but it shows where priorities are. (As an aside, there’s a growing movement to A) rename B.C. cities after indigenous names and B) “correct” the spellings of cities that already have indigenous names.

Thus, Kamloops could be renamed Tk’emlúps. I’m not sure what would happen to Prince George).

As it happens, this long weekend is the immediate precursor to a sad anniversary at Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc related to residential schools. Anyway, the Queen Victoria’s Birthday long weekend is an appropriate time to talk about such things, especially since Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwell, have just flown home after a quick three-day visit to Canada.

Any Royal visit automatically re-opens the debate about whether Canada should remain a constitutional monarchy or turn itself into a republic similar to the U.S. Public opinion polls show support for the monarchy consistently slipping.

A recent Angus Reid Institute poll showed 51 per cent in favour of waving the monarchy goodbye. Let’s be honest, though, a lot of it has to do with personalities rather than the monarchy itself.

Charles has never been particularly popular in this country. Even when he visited Kamloops and other B.C. cities in 1986, with Diana at his side, one Canadian columnist unkindly referred to him as “Bat Ears.” Charles has been hard done by. He was under-appreciated and ordered around when he was younger.

I know this because I’ve binge-watched The Crown. Sure, he’s come out with a good share of head scratchers, such as that cringe-worthy moment when a TV interviewer asked him and Diana if they were in love — she quickly responded “Of course,” while he said, “Whatever ‘in love’ means.” Ouch.

The result is that Canadians have a hard time imagining Charles as king, and Camilla has struggled to get traction in our hearts. We love the Queen, and we’d also happily take William and Kate as the next Royal Couple in Charge. Charles and Camilla — not so much.

But, being a monarchist at heart, I suggest we give poor Charles and Camilla a chance. We can’t simply put the monarchy on pause for 20 years until Charles is gone. And I have yet to hear anyone explain what we would gain without the Royals.

It would not improve Canada in any way, and we’d have to change all those pictures in the post office.

Saving some money on Royal visits would be about the only benefit, and surely we can shell out a million bucks every few years to provide ourselves the entertainment of crowding into streets and parks — as we did in Kamloops in 1986 — to watch the Royals go by.

No, we should keep the Royals, keep their faces on our money and stamps, keep celebrating Victoria Day (as we have since 1845) and keep the ‘Royal’ in the names of our national police force and on our fine provincial museum.

Have a wonderful long weekend and raise a glass in memory of Queen Victoria and in honour of Queen Elizabeth — may she be with us for a long while yet.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.