Forrest Go
King Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Canada subsequent week for a go to that has been timed to buttress Canadian sovereignty amid tensions with the US. Royal watchers can pay shut consideration to the royal couple’s wardrobe decisions for refined indicators of the Sovereign and Consort’s help for Canada. Lately, the King selected to put on his Canadian medals for a Royal Navy go to, and the Princess of Wales’ alternative of a crimson costume for Commonwealth Day festivities may have been a gesture of solidarity.
The intersection of sovereignty and sartorial choice presents an fascinating parallel between this go to and the Canadian tour of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later Elizabeth the Queen Mom) in 1939 – the primary by a reigning monarch and his consort. Then as now, organizers hoped that the go to would emphasize Canadian autonomy throughout the Commonwealth and shore up nationwide unity in unsure occasions. And in 1939 as in 2025, some Canadians and Canadian heritage establishments grew to become very enthusiastic about an article of royal clothes.
The garment in query was the costume worn by Queen Elizabeth throughout the couple’s go to to Parliament Hill, when the King had presided over Parliament’s prorogation and gave royal assent to quite a few payments. Conceived by acclaimed British designer Sir Norman Hartnell, the costume had seemingly value $20 000 and was one of many Queen’s favourites. For artist Elizabeth Delafield of Toronto, the costume was an merchandise of aesthetic and historic significance. “By no means have I seen one thing fairly so beautiful as Her Majesty in that stunning robe,” gushed Delafield in a handwritten notice to Sir Arthur Shuldham Redfern, Secretary to the Governor Common. “Might not this very lovely little bit of Royal Canadian Historical past be left in Canada to be cherished?” On everlasting exhibit, the costume would encourage future generations, each for example of historic costume and as a memento of a historic constitutional second.[1]
Redfern dealt every day with “letters containing wild and impracticable recommendations,” however he believed Delafield’s thought had uncommon advantage. He misplaced no time in writing to Woman Katherine Seymour, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, aboard the Royal Prepare, then chugging quickly via northern Ontario. A number of months of negotiations between Rideau Corridor and Buckingham Palace ensued, and by the autumn of 1939, the Queen had consented to ship her costume to Canada. However which museum would home and show it? Redfern disagreed with Delafield’s recommended dwelling – the Nationwide Museum of Canada – which he privately characterised as “a mouldy and uninspiring assortment of stuffed birds, dinosaurs, Indian canoes, bottles of wheat grain and geological specimens.” He recommended, as an alternative, that the costume go to the Public Archives of Canada and the Palace agreed.[2]
Redfern’s evaluation was harsh, but it surely contained a kernel of reality: earlier than the Sixties, the Nationwide Museum centered on pure historical past and on Indigenous archaeology and ethnology and didn’t but have a transparent mandate to gather latest Canadiana. In the meantime, the Public Archives’ collections mandate included three-dimensional artifacts in addition to archival paperwork, owing to the ambitions of longtime archivist Arthur Doughty. Doughty and his workers and successors curated an eclectic museum, which had grow to be a preferred Ottawa vacationer attraction. The Queen’s Gown was a welcome addition and Princess Alice of Albany, spouse of incoming Governor Common the Earl of Athlone, introduced it to the Archives with a lot fanfare on December 19, 1940.[3]
However the costume had one other smitten suitor. On the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, director C.T. Currelly hoped to accumulate the costume to enhance two Coronation clothes already acquired from the King’s mom, Queen Mary. When he wrote to Buckingham Palace to request it, Sir Alan “Tommy” Lascelles, the King’s assistant non-public secretary, responded that the Queen had consented to offer the costume to Canada, however deferred to the Governor Common’s workplace to determine which museum would home it. Currelly argued to Redfern that his establishment ought to have the honour, “as we’re the one museum in Canada that has a gallery of clothes, and likewise as we’re so enormously higher than all of the others put collectively.” Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and different federal officers maintained that the costume had been worn at a federal, not provincial, ceremony and ought to remain in Ottawa. Redfern tersely communicated this determination to Currelly.[4]
Currelly, nonetheless, was cussed. In 1944, he wrote to nationwide archivist Gustave Lanctôt protesting that the Queen had promised the costume to his museum, and “official bungling” had led to being mistakenly introduced to the archives. This model of occasions conveniently ignored the paper path, and Lanctôt responded as a lot. Currelly conceded reluctantly. “This being so there’s nothing extra we are able to do about it,” he replied to the archivist, “however I nonetheless assume it will be significantly better positioned in our assortment.”[5]
Currelly’s conciliatory angle didn’t final. Two years later, he wrote to Rideau Corridor, noting that the costume was important to his exhibition of queenly robes and that it will commemorate Canada’s contribution to the Commonwealth warfare effort. He once more alleged – with out proof – that the costume’s presentation to the archives was an administrative error. Forwarded to Prime Minister King, Currelly’s letter mysteriously provoked a direct determination to ship the costume to Toronto, with no rationale given. Lanctôt protested to his boss, Secretary of State Paul Martin, Sr., that there was “no document” of the Queen having promised the costume to the ROM, and that this nationwide artifact ought to stay within the nationwide capital. In the long run, nonetheless, the archivist complied, asking provided that the ROM may buy the costly mount and case the archives had simply commissioned for the costume. The victorious Currelly declined: his show instances all needed to match. The costume stays on the ROM to today.[6]
The case of the Queen’s Gown illustrates the power of some Canadians’ fascination with royal clothes and the messages it may possibly ship. To Elizabeth Delafield, the costume was an inspiring memento of a magical second. To federal officers, together with archivist Gustave Lanctôt, it recalled an essential episode in Canada’s constitutional evolution, the primary time a reigning monarch had presided in Parliament. For the ROM’s C.T. Currelly, it commemorated Canada’s warfare contributions, however primarily contributed to an formidable collections and exhibition mission on historic clothes. The struggle over the frock additionally revealed the divisions and jealousies amongst Canada’s rising heritage establishments, whose mandates have been, as but, broadly outlined and generally overlapping. Sleeveless although it was, the Queen’s Gown impressed custodians of the nation’s reminiscence to place their elbows up – if solely to claim or defend their very own institutional turf.
Forrest Go is a curator at Library and Archives Canada. His work on features of Canadian materials tradition has appeared in Water Historical past, Gown, the Journal of Sport Historical past, and the Journal for Analysis into Freemasonry and Fraternalism.
[1] Library and Archives Canada (hereafter LAC), Workplace of the Governor Common fonds, RG 7 G 26, v. 95, file 2213 D (26), Elizabeth Delafield to Arthur Shuldham Redfern, Might 1939.
[2] LAC, RG 7 G 26, v. 95, file 2213 D (26), Redfern to Seymour, Jun 3, 1939; Arthur Penn, A/Secretary to the Queen, to Redfern, Jul 5, 1940.
[3] “Queen’s $20 000 Robe is Introduced to Canada,” Ottawa Journal, Dec 20, 1940.
[4] LAC, RG 7 G 26, v. 95, file 2213 D (26), C.T. Currelly to Redfern, Oct 18, 1939; Sir Alan Lascelles to Currelly, Oct 4, 1939; Hugh Keenleyside to Redfern, Nov 1, 1939; E.H. Coleman to Redfern, Nov 23, 1939; Redfern to Currelly, Nov 25, 1939.
[5] LAC, Nationwide Archives of Canada fonds, RG 37, v. 75, file 60-7-6, Currelly to Gustave Lanctôt, Feb 2, 1944; Lanctôt to Currelly, Feb 3, 1944; Currelly to Lanctôt, Feb 24, 1944.
[6] LAC, William Lyon Mackenzie King fonds, MG 26 J 1, v. 401, Currelly to Princess Alice, Feb 11, 1946; RG 37, v. 75, file 60-7-6, Martin to Lanctôt, Mar 13, 1946; Lanctôt to Martin, Mar 14, 1946, enclosing “Memorandum concerning Queen Elizabeth’s Gown now within the Exhibitions Rooms of the Public Archives”; Lanctôt to Martin, Mar 21, 1946; Lanctôt to Currelly, Mar 21, 1946; Currelly to Lanctôt, Mar 22, 1946; v. 47, Lanctôt to King, Mar 26, 1946.
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