Royal Transport. Peter Pigott

Her father too was quite content to be a country squire. For, despite the luxury and deferential treatment, the Queen, in common with her father, has found travel a duty like everything else.

      The costs of official royal travel by air and rail used to be shared by the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Transport, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. At the royal household’s suggestion, responsibility for the expenditure was transferred to the household from April 1, 1997. The royal household now receives annual funding to meet the costs of official royal travel, in the form of a Royal Travel Grant-in-Aid from Parliament, through the Department of Transport. Today the majority of royal travel expenditure goes toward the Queen’s helicopter and the chartering of scheduled fixed-wing aircraft provided by airlines for overseas state visits. The aircraft provided to her by the RAF’s 32 Squadron serve the requirements of the Royal Air Force 80 percent of the time. The Queen’s official travel by car is paid for from the Civil List and for the Duke of Edinburgh from his Parliamentary Annuity. Payment for official travel for other members of the royal family comes from their private sources.² In 2004, Britons paid the equivalent of about $1.10 each in taxes to support Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family — the price then of a loaf of bread; they were getting a bargain.

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       HRH Prince Arthur on a sleigh, 1869, Montreal, Quebec.

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       Probably the most unusual royal transport: the royal party running the Chaudiere timber slide on a timber crib, September 1901, Ottawa, Ontario.

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       Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson on the mini-rail at Expo ’67.

      Royal visitors to Canada have travelled by horse-drawn sleigh, by rafts on the Chaudière timber slide, and by specially built trains. A remnant from that era (and most familiar to Canadian television viewers) is the state landau, the usual mode for royal travel in Ottawa. In 1911, at the end of his term as Governor General, Earl Grey sold his landau, which he had purchased from the Governor General of Australia, to the Canadian government. The carriage received widespread use during the Royal Tour of 1939 but was put away during the Second World War, only to be brought out again in 1953 by Governor General Vincent Massey. The state landau is still used for the opening of Parliament and during official state visits.

      As of 2004, in her twenty-one Canadian visits as queen (and once as princess), Her Majesty has ridden in the state landau, in convertibles, on stagecoaches, and on a mini-rail. This last took place when the Queen was invited to help celebrate Canada’s centenary in 1967. Her Majesty unexpectedly asked Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson if she could tour the Expo ’67 site on the specially built mini-rail. Security officials scrambled to accede to her wish and were initially going to completely restrict access to the entire site during the royal visit. In the end, however, only a part of Île Notre-Dame, where the pavilions of Great Britain and Canada were located, was made off-limits to visitors. Fairgoers cheered the Queen along the route, a journey that lasted forty minutes. The ride was a symbolic journey to celebrate Canada’s coming of age.

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       HRH Princess Elizabeth leaving the stagecoach at the Stadium, assisted by Mr. Jim Cross, President, Calgary Stampede Association, October 18, 1951, Calgary, Alberta.

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       Their Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth ride through Ottawa in the state landau, May 1939.

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       Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh ride to the Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, in the same state landau that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth used.

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       1951 tour: Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh leave Dorval Airport in a convertible.

      But no Royal Tour will ever equal (in the memories of a certain generation of Canadians) the 1939 visit of George VI and Queen Elizabeth, when for the first time in history, a reigning monarch and his consort, in the King’s words, “shook the hands of everyone in the country.” The Queen Mother remembered the tour years later: “I lost my heart to Canada and to Canadians, and my feelings have not changed with the passage of time.” It was this tour that gave birth to that royal staple, the walkabout. In Ottawa, beside the War Memorial, Her Majesty plunged into the crowds to meet with the veterans. One young soldier memorably said, “I wish Hitler could see this.” The cynical would say that the whole tour had been designed to achieve that very purpose, that is, to bring Canada into a European war. Whatever the opinion, the outpouring of goodwill and affection that was evident as Their Majesties made their way across the continent has never been equalled, and has been immortalized in history texts, newsreels, and radio broadcasts. A single anecdote sums it up: As the royal train wound through the Rockies, it stopped one night for water at a small station. A crowd of locals gathered around the balcony of the last car, hoping to see Their Majesties. The King and Queen took the opportunity to stretch their legs, and stepped down into the crowd. At that moment, the moon came out, illuminating the scene, and a young man within the crowd began singing “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain.” He sang like Nelson Eddy, the Queen’s favourite singer, and first she and then His Majesty joined in. Soon everyone took up the song. The royal train was soon on its way, and the locals dispersed into the deep Canadian forests, with the memorable scene destined to pass not into history but surely into the hearts of those who witnessed it. The public interest in Royal Tours has abated little since 1939.

      If the travellers were not the royal family, who would care what cars, aircraft, or yachts they use? Air Force One, the Boeing 747 of the President of the United States, is far larger than the aircraft of the Queen’s Flight, the Saudi royal family has many more Rolls-Royces, and the fittings on Saddam Hussein’s former presidential yacht al-Mansur definitely outnumbered those on the now-decommissioned Britannia. Her Majesty now shares her aircraft with ministers and military personnel. The furnishings of the royal train have been described as rather dowdy, and the Rolls Royce Phantoms manage to convey a hearse-like, antiquated splendour. With the exception of the state coaches, the transport of the royal family is hardly noteworthy.

      Perhaps because of this, there has been as far as I could ascertain, no complete study on all the family’s modes of transport. That is a pity, because, whether the Queen travels in the Gold Coach or a Canadian Forces aircraft, by the mere fact that she has done so, the vehicle becomes a link with our heritage. The grandeur of the monarchy, however faded one might hold it to be, provides continuity in a rapidly changing, increasingly globalized world. How it will adapt when Prince Charles comes to the throne (and if he will still be the King of Canada then) cannot be known. But my aunt is right. One tampers with such institutions at one’s peril.

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       Buckingham palace on wheels — the Canadian National Railways carriages used by Their Majesties in the Royal Train in 1939.

      On June 13, 1842, Her Majesty Queen Victoria took her first