Sadly the end of May is coming quickly, and that means that our May theme of the history of royal tours is also drawing to a close! (Though it won’t be gone forever.) To celebrate the month and hopefully give some more insight into my own collection, today I’m going into my archives. I am sharing some of my favourite royal tour pieces that I’ve personally collected. Throughout the years, I’ve been lucky enough to acquire some very cool pieces and I know that people enjoy getting to see the actual items. Today I’m sharing my favourite royal tour mementos from 1939 and 1951!
My Favourite Royal Tour Mementos
These are from the 1939 and 1951 royal tours to Canada. While I do have some recreations from earlier tours (like the 1901 tour) and books produced for later tours, these remain my favourites!
1939 Royal Tour Photobook
This book was produced by the Winnipeg Free Press to commemorate King George V and Queen Elizabeth’s time in Winnipeg on their 1939 tour across Canada. They travelled coast to coast during the five week trip and even spent some time in the US. They were in Manitoba (my province) on May 24 and June 4 and were met by massive crowds both days. It includes photographs from the WFP and from crowd members, in addition to written pieces recalling different experiences during the visit.
The book takes a fairly worshipful tone, which is an interesting element given the reception of royals on tour now. One of the first written pieces opens with,
“Sunlight broke through dark clouds as the King and Queen arrived in Winnipeg Wednesday and passed down the spacious avenues of our city of the Legislative Building. I defy anyone to contradict me… As Their Majesties’ car swung south from Portage Avenue into Memorial Boulevard, I was sure I saw a rainbow… There comes times when the inner eye perceives the truest things of all, and this was one of them.”
It is important to note that there were certainly people critical of the monarchy at the time (though far less people than now), but they wouldn’t create a book about a royal tour. However, this is still a useful primary source to provide insights into the tour!
1951 Toronto Star Weekly- “The Royal Tour in Photos”
This vintage magazine by the Toronto Star Weekly was a gift and it is one of my favourite pieces. There were weekly magazines created for this month-long tour, and this is one of the weekly magazines. What stands out to me particularly about this is the fact that not only is the tour being consistently covered in the press but that multiple issues were created. Obviously newspapers and print media as a whole have undergone massive changes in the last decades and as someone born in the 1980s, I do very much remember regular newspapers and magazines. However, very few events that I remember garnered entire separate sections for multiple days, let alone weeks.
I have to say, it is much more difficult to keep pieces of media like this. You can save PDFs of web articles, but that isn’t the same.
1951 Pitkin Guide- “The Royal Tour of Canada”
This Pitkin Guide of the 1951 tour where Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Canada in the autumn is possibly my favourite piece in my collection (aside from coronation pieces).
As Basford Books explains Pitkin Guides,
“The founder, Mr Pitkin, was a post-war entrepreneur devoted to publishing highly illustrated souvenir guidebooks that commemorated special people and events in British history. One of the earliest souvenirs was for Princess Elizabeth’s wedding day in 1947, and subsequent publications documented other memorable royal occasions.”
These are small books that are largely composed of photos of different events and individuals, and this one covers the tour to Canada. Because it was a long tour, we get quite a variety of photos (including my favourite royal photos in history, Elizabeth and Philip square dancing in Ottawa). Although there isn’t a lot of additional information provided, it is a great “snapshot” souvenir. (You can also get them for several other tours and royal events, like weddings.)
~ 1953 Royal Winnipeg Ballet of Canada Programme
This is another obscure royal tour memento and is borderline specific to the tour, but I am most proud of this piece in my collection. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet was originally known as the Winnipeg Ballet Cub, and they performed for the royal couple on their 1951 tour- that is the image on the front of this programme.
However, you will notice that the cover says the “Royal Winnipeg Ballet”, not the “Winnipeg Ballet Club”. The RWB was the first organisation granted a royal title during the new queen’s reign, receiving it in 1953. (Yes, we were before the Royal Ballet in London!) That means that this programme dates to at least 1953 but heavily draws on the royal tour performance in 1951 and shows how important the performance was for the company.
Want More on Royal Tours?
I hope you’ve enjoyed a sneak peak into my royal tour mementos!
Cheers,
The Historian
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