TRIBUTE TO THE QUEEN

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21204, 29 August 1940, Page 4

TRIBUTE TO THE QUEEN

WOMEN’S INSTITUTE MEMBERS A touching incident took place this May, as a sequel to the visit of King George and Queen Elizabeth to Canada last year. During Their Majesties’ stay at Government House in Ottawa, Lord and Lady Tweedsmuir, who governed then and who loved to drive out in the country around Ottawa, leave their car, and stride across fields, climb hills, and take a proper country walk, recommended their favourite walk—a good turn around one of the farms out on the Aylmer Road. Slipped Away Unheralded Sure enough, Their Majesties found time for it. They slipped away, unheralded, before the Garden Party. They made themselves late to their own party; but for once they had a private walk in Ottawa’s countryside. A member cf the Aylmer East Women’s Institute stood at the corner of the dirt road leading from the highway to her farm, saw the Queen kick off her high heeled shoes on the white rug on the bottom of the Royal Car, don proper walking shoes, and stride up the lane with her husband. “They walked like people who are used to 'walking. That’s what struck me most,” she said. Then the Queen met the Institute woman’s son, stooped to pat his mongrel dog, and picked dog-tooth

violets with him by the roadside. It was all a very private affair. On the anniversary of this day, the Aylmer East Women’s Institute gathered by the side of the highway where that dirt road turned off, and planted a tree. Cars whizzed past on the highway, bearing early golfers to the various Ottawa clubs, the occupants leaning out to stare at the odd little group of women with spades.

Between Them and Their Queen “I might have made this quite an occasion,” said the Member in Charge. “I could have got some Government member or an officer from Government House to come and plant this tree. But, ladies, the little incident we have come here to remember was a private matter, just between ourselves and our Queen; and it wouldn’t be fitting to make a public show of it.” The little boy was there. He had brought his dog, well brushed for the occasion, and also two other little boys who had run away because they were too shy to talk to the Queen.

A sturdy oak was planted, every woman throwing in a handful of earth. And then a prayer was said right there in the open beside the streaming traffic—an informal little prayer for the Empire to live and shelter truth and decency, just as the oak would grow to shelter the earth beneath it.

The country-loving Queen, who had stopped to pick flowers there the year before, had carried back to England with her these women’s private affection and respect. The simple things of the world mattered —they had learned—in Government Bouse in Ottawa and in Buckingham Palace in London as well as on their small farms. There was not a dry eye in the group. They sang God Save the King against the noise of traffic and went home.