September 13, 2022

I received an email telling me that my daughter has school off next Monday, September 19. At first glance, I didn’t understand why. 

Then I found out that the Queen’s funeral was going to be on September 19, 2022. Now it made sense – sort of.

They have closed the schools because of her funeral on Monday. Canadian federal government employees now have a paid long weekend as well. That’s right, Canada has taken a holiday to honour the Queen’s passing. So they can watch a funeral from across the Atlantic Ocean – I guess.

I’m trying to wrap my head around the thought of spending millions of dollars paying people to stay at home because a monarch who has been around for over seventy years has finally passed away. No one took a holiday when my friend Phil had his celebration of life last weekend. No one had any mass mourning when one of my favourite musicians, Tom Petty, died. When my dad had his celebration of life we did it on a Sunday so no one had to take time off work. 

But here we are a country a hundred years and a thousand miles removed from the Queen and the royal family and we get to pay our civic employees to take the day off and not attend a funeral for one of the wealthiest women ever born.

It doesn’t make any sense to me.

I am no longer someone who believes in royalty. I respect Queen Elisabeth and what she accomplished as Queen of Great Britain. But to shut everything down while our economy tilts on the brink of collapse and our government debts mount seems like more than just a waste.

It is a travesty.

Why not have the funeral on a Saturday or a Sunday as normal people do?

No wonder so many people are tired of the so-called elites. 

I know many people in the Commonwealth love the royals and the whole idea of royalty. The more I think about it the more I question its validity in the modern world. There is a whole family of uber-rich people that contribute very little toward the running of their country who are fawned over and treated as if they are something special. Why? Because they were born into a family who inherited the “rulership” of a once great kingdom… 

Now Canadian taxpayers get to fork out more of our hard-earned cash to pay our civil servants to take a day off. Single mothers need to take a day off work on short notice to look after their kids because they can’t afford to pay or even find child care.

How is any of this making any sense?

Some would argue that the royal family brings vast amounts of tourism dollars into The United Kingdom and that in itself is worth having the Royal family. Into the United Kingdom… so why do we have anything to do with royalty in Canada? 

Is it because it is so ingrained into our system that the cost of changing things is prohibitive? Do that many people in Canada like or want a King or Queen? 

I think it’s time to relegate royalty to the history books and story books. There is no place in the modern world for a King… 

But I am only one person and my opinion is just that, an opinion. 

I would love to see the wealth possessed by these elites be distributed to the people who can barely feed their families because their wages have not kept up with the cost of living. But of course, that is a story for fantasy novels, not the real world. 

Rest In Peace Elisabeth I hope you are the end of a bygone era. 

Rest in peace royal family, your time is at an end.