CANADA: The New Viceroy

This week Canada installs in office a new Governor General George Philias Vanier. 71, the first French Canadian to serve as head of state in the U.S.’s next-door good neighbor.

Almost no one could be more suitable for the mostly ceremonial position than Vanier, a courtly, erect soldier-diplomat full of years and his country’s honors. Major General Vanier’s family emigrated to New France from Normandy 300 years ago. Tall, mustached, old-worldly, he walks with a black walnut cane, a reminder of the leg he lost (and the D.S.O. he won) as a major of Quebec’s famed Royal 22nd Regiment (the “Van Doos”) at Cherisy in World War I. In Paris, where Vanier was Canada’s admired postwar ambassador (1945-53), he is remembered as a sort of Canadian Charles de Gaulle (they are close friends).

In a constitutional monarchy within the modern Commonwealth of Nations, the Governor General, though he lives in high style at Government House, no longer governs except for the once-in-a-lifetime occasion when politicians disagree, and he must choose a Prime Minister to form a government. Vanier was picked by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, formally appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, and in all important respects serves as the Queen’s standin, exercising her powers and prerogatives. His main function is to exemplify the unifying symbol of the Crown in his travels across the land. His predecessor set an arduous example. Retiring Vincent Massey, 72, in his 7½ years as Canada’s first native-born Governor General, entertained 75,000 Canadians at Government House in Ottawa, traveled 200,000 miles across the nation, and—exercising a royal prerogative—gave holidays to 250,000 schoolchildren.