Canadians react to restoring “Royal” to Navy and Air Force

There’s been much reaction to this week’s announcement that the air and maritime divisions of the Canadian Forces will be re-named the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy. (The name of the land force command is also to be changed, to the Canadian Army.) Here’s a sampler.

The CBC found a chorus of critical voices, including Tom Freda, co-founder and director of Citizens for a Canadian Republic:

“We’ve had gradual, incremental changes toward putting our colonialist symbols into the dustbin of history, and this is the first time a government has taken steps to restore it”

Senator Colin Kenny wrote an op-ed saying he doesn’t mind putting the ‘royal’ back, but the move smacks of style over substance, in terms of meeting real military needs.

“…if you’re a corporate executive and you don’t have a product to sell, best to sell image.”

Columnist David Warren is pretty much ecstatic about the move, and only wishes his father was alive to see this day. Warren writes critically about what the 1968 name change and 1965’s introduction of the Maple Leaf flag were meant to accomplish, from his point of view. I’ll share this excerpt from his column, to illustrate the depth of emotion that surrounded this topic, then and (perhaps) now:

Defeat had never been taught to our Canadian armed forces, and it is hard now to remember the shock of the 1968 “unification” scheme, as it was smugly announced by defence minister Paul Hellyer. Men and women so immensely proud of their uniforms and traditions were suddenly stripped of them all by Liberal politicians from Venus.

My grandfather, who had ascended Vimy Ridge with the Canadian Corps in 1917, wept at this “desecration.” My father, a Spitfire flyboy in the war after – who had been, incidentally, an habitual Liberal voter – was speechless. He understood perfectly the need for better integration of land, sea, and air. He could not understand why this was being used as pretext to turn our military into “a faceless ant army of little green men.”

The Star editorializes that restoring the word royal is great as a morale booster, but there are bigger concerns that merit attention:

What won’t work is refighting ancient battles over reunification and a single command structure. The changes to the name of the forces announced on Tuesday by Defence Minister Peter MacKay sound purely symbolic, and they should be. Canada’s forces – no matter what names they go under – are entering a period of intense change and the focus needs to be on investing in the right places.

Hmm. Politicians don’t really understand the military. Political support for men and women in uniform contains more lip service than substance. Nothing new there!

But what about the relationship of tradition and pride to morale? Should that count? (If morale is indeed affected by names, as argued by service men and women.)

Conversely, what about Canadians who fervently wish to shed vestiges of colonialism? Whose goals and feelings matter more?

I’ve written before that Canadians are conflicted about the fact that Canada was – and remains – a constitutional monarchy.

The choice of sticking with tradition, or developing some new model, comes up now and again, as with this name kerfuffle. But it almost always settles down and retreats to some back burner. Will it ever come to a full boil? Not if Prime Minister Stephen Harper can help it. And almost certainly not during Elizabeth II’s reign.

After that though, who knows?

Tags: canada, Canadian military, role of monarchy in Canada, Royal name change