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Name: Date: Canada’s New Queen A Golden Tour

This was to be the Queen’s big year, her Golden Jubilee. And it would, finally, perhaps, be a welcome annus mirabilis for the 75-year-old monarch who, for a long and miserable stretch in the 1980s and 1990s, suffered one sorry annus horribilis after another.

There was Charles’ divorce, Diana’s tragic car crash in a Paris tunnel, her sister Margaret’s stroke, Fergie’s antics, and the night an intruder somehow managed to find his way to the royal bedroom. The talk now is that the Queen will hold onto the English throne as long as it takes to prevent her 53-year- old son from becoming king, all because Charles is involved in a passionate liaison with Camilla Parker Bowles, a divorced woman. The Globe and Mail carried a story early this year quoting the Queen as telling a friend that Camilla looks “rather used.”

But, while 2002 looked like a love-in for Elizabeth II, the fifth British monarch to celebrate a Golden Jubilee, the celebrations were to be overshadowed for much of the year by the deaths of Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother.

Months after those deaths, though, Britain was set for the party of all parties held over a four-day weekend, starting June 1, with bell-ringing throughout the kingdom, marches, religious observances, light shows and fireworks, and a pop concert in Buckingham Palace.

Later in the year, the Queen arrives in Canada where she will visit Nunavut, Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba, and British Columbia. The Royal Canadian Mint will mark the occasion by issuing a sterling silver dollar, with the Queen at her coronation on one side and an effigy of her by artist Dora de Pedery-Hunt on the other. All Canadian coins minted in 2002 will display the dates 1952-2002.

One more Canadian touch: Canadian rock star Bryan Adams has been named to take an official photo- graph of the Queen. He did a book of photographic portraits in 1999, titled Made in Canada, to raise money for breast cancer research.

Her travels will extend much beyond Canada this year. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were to visit every region of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. She will also visit Jamaica, New Zealand, and Australia.

From http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/queen/index.html

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