York Sunbury Historical Society Program
All evening programs take place at Old Government House (51 Woodstock Road, Fredericton) at 7:30pm. We can park on site and come in the side entrance and programs are free and open to the public!
The York Sunbury Historical Society presentation on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at Old Government House:
A Hearty Welcome: Royal Tours of New Brunswick, 1794-2012
By Barry MacKenzie
Queen Elizabeth’s 1984 Royal Visit to New Brunswick (Canada). Photo courtesy of the York Sunbury Historical Society Eugene Campbell Collection.
Just ten years after it was partitioned into its own colony from the wide expanse of territory that was known as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick hosted the first of several dozen members of its Royal Family. During the next century, these tours were few and far between – although always major events in the social calendar of the colony and later the province. As the twentieth century dawned, the Queen’s whose children had become familiar to the people of New Brunswick, through four major tours undertaken between 1860 and 1879, died peacefully on the Isle of Wight. But despite the death of the Queen, the Empire and Commonwealth endured and, in the century which followed, the province has been visited by nearly every senior member of the Royal Family from George V and Queen Mary (as Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York) to Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. These tours, though numerous, have never been lengthy. Their significance, however, has not been lost in the public memory of the province, and this paper looks back at several important moments through nearly two-and-a-quarter century’s worth of Royal Tours of New Brunswick.
Speaker’s Biography: Barry MacKenzie is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick whose focus is Royal Tours of New Brunswick. He received a Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude) from St. Francis Xavier Univeristy in 2007 and a Master of Arts from UNB in 2009. He is also Co-Chairman and Communications Officer of the NB Branch of the Monarchist League of Canada, a past Communications Director with the New Brunswick Scottish Cultural Association, and an occasional contributor of historical materials to the Miramichi Leader. He is also an avid genealogist and, most importantly, a husband to Marielle and father to Henry.
Video from the exhibit opening: