It went from a scurrilous rumour to full-blown scandal within 24 hours: the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are stepping back from their royal duties and mulling a move to North America. And according to a “pal” initially quoted in a recent Sun exclusive, they’re likely to set up shop in Canada, following what seemed like a lovely Christmas holiday on drizzly Vancouver Island.
As a lifelong Canadian, and avowed anti-monarchist who winces every time he passes a Canadian $20 note bearing the Queen’s visage, I say through gritted teeth: welcome, royal overlords, to our glorious Commonwealth manor! Stay a while: sample the motley fruits assembled before you at our multicultural buffet; laugh madly as your royal motorcade blasts down the expanses of the Trans-Canada highway, and be loudly and robustly booed as your faces grace the enormous Jumbotron at a Canadian football game!
If, as the gossip suggests, Prince Harry, Meghan and the wee baby Archie do plan on spending a considerable portion of the year in the chilliest of Britain’s former dependencies, I can offer a few good-faith tips to assist them in integrating into the customs and culture of Canada.
The historic home of Canada Goose-branded parkas and the Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada is a hub of high fashion. Lest Harry and Meghan be outed as our social and political betters, they’d do well to ditch the crowns, sceptres and garlands of invaluable gems and jewels, and dress the part of your average Canuck. I’m talking red-and-black flannel shirts, Randy River denim jeans, mukluk boots (the bigger the better), and the cherry on top – a vintage Roots cap of the kind famously sported by the disgraced Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ross Rebagliati. So attired, the royals will pass seamlessly as a couple of workaday “hosers”. And, by the way, while you might think “hoser” is an insult – referring to the stereotype of a beer-swilling, proudly uncultivated Canadian – it’s actually a term of endearment. So, Harry and Meghan, use it freely. In fact: refer to anyone and everyone you meet as a hoser.
As far as lodging goes, Canada offers plenty of luxe options. Obviously, Vancouver – where a penthouse condo was recently listed for $26m – offers pricey lodging befitting a duke and duchess. Ottawa, the nation’s capital and so-called “city that fun forgot” may be suitable. If you squint, the parliament buildings faintly resemble palaces. Maybe? But really, there’s no choice more suitable than Toronto, aka “Canada’s only city”.
While Toronto may be more known for its glass-and-concrete architecture, we can’t expect the Sussexes to feather their nest in such unfeeling, brutalist trappings. Meghan may have lived under the radar in Toronto for years, relative to her life now, while filming the TV legal drama Suits, but a royal (even a reluctant one) can hardly afford to remain inconspicuous. The duchess and her duke are far more likely to install themselves along the Bridle Path, a celebrity-rich strip of real estate in North York, which the likes of Drake and Céline Dion have called it home. Granted, the Bridle Path is known as “Millionaire’s Row”, which may be more than a little vulgar for members of a royal line of succession. But all the same, it offers a rare opportunity for the Sussexes to slum it, and connect with the baseborn rabble from the comfort of a modest, 40,000 sq ft pied-à-terre.
And speaking of French words: do Harry and Meghan know that Canada has about 7.2 million people for whom French is their first language? And, sorry to say, but they have even less tolerance for the royals than many of us anglophones. Still, ancient enmities dating back at least as far as the Seven Years’ War can’t last forever, right? I heartily encourage Harry to waltz into a bar in a Montreal neighbourhood such as Pointe-Saint-Charles and proudly announce himself as the prince of England. Who better to offer up an olive branch that can ease the hitherto irreconcilable tensions between Canada’s two solitudes?
Finally, it may sound awfully cliched, but if the duke and duchess and their bouncing royal baby are keen on understanding the lot of the common Canadian, there is one shortcut: ice hockey. Yes, it’s our national pastime. But more than that, pro hockey proves the one place where anyone, no matter their rank or station in life, can join together in one of the nation’s genuinely unifying, communal rituals: watching our homegrown teams get trounced in the playoffs. If Harry and Meghan do fully disentangle themselves from their historic obligations and ditch the royals, they’re bound to find a new family among the ranks packing out the nosebleeds of the nation’s hockey arenas, comforting themselves with quixotic talk about things working out better next year. Welcome, Sussexes, to the land of the beautiful losers.
• John Semley is the author of Hater: On the Virtues of Utter Disagreeability
