1939 royal tour of Canada

The 1939 royal tour of Canada by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth was undertaken in the build-up of world political tensions to the imminent Second World War (1939-1945), as a way to shore up sympathy for the United Kingdom among her dominions and allies, should war break out in Europe. The tour lasted a month, from 17 May to 15 June, covering every province in Canada, along with the then separate Dominion of Newfoundland, and a few days south in the adjacent United States. It demonstrated and cemented Canada's allegiance to the Crown and its status as the senior Dominion of the then British Empire (future Commonwealth of Nations). There had been previous royal family tours in Canada, but, the 1939 tour was unprecedented, both due to the fact that it was the first visit to North America by the reigning monarch, as well as in its wide scope and public / media attention. The tour was an enormous event of the time, attracting huge crowds at each new city.

The King and Queen arrived by ship up the St. Lawrence River to Quebec City and travelled west by rail, accompanied throughout their journey by King George's Canadian Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King. The party visited most of the major cities travelling across the Dominion, finally arriving furthest west in Victoria, British Columbia. They then returned east and made a state visit south for the first time to the United States, meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt (with his wife Eleanor Roosevelt). The tour of the royal couple ended with a visit to the Maritimes and then to Newfoundland (which was then still a separate dominion of the British Empire), departing from Halifax.

It was the first visit by a reigning monarch of Canada and also the first time a Canadian monarch had set foot south in the United States.

This tour also marked the first time that the sovereign's official Canadian birthday was marked with the Monarch himself present; the occasion was marked on Ottawa's Parliament Hill with a celebration and a Trooping the Colour, ceremonial parade reviewing the troops.

Almost a half-century later (in 1985), during another tour of Canada, Queen Elizabeth, by then the Queen Mother, said, "it is now some 46 years since I first came to this country with the King, in those anxious days shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. I shall always look back upon that visit with feelings of affection and happiness. I think I lost my heart to Canada and Canadians, and my feelings have not changed with the passage of time."^[1]