Hon. Paula Simons: Honourable senators, in 1867, the year Canada came to be, the great British essayist Walter Bagehot published his master work, The English Constitution. Bagehot argued the constitution’s unique genius was its division of government into two parts: the “dignified” and the “efficient.” The elected House of Commons and cabinet, he said, represented the efficient part of government, the part that got things done. But the Crown, as embodied by Queen Victoria, was just as important, he said, because it captured mystery, beauty and romance. Its theatricality was essential to inspiring and connecting people.

For 70 transformative, difficult years, Queen Elizabeth II played that theatrical, dignified role as Queen of Canada: a resolutely non-partisan symbol, above the daily political fray, the embodiment of the Crown and of the best ideals of the Canadian Constitution and our constitutional monarchy.

Four years ago, I took my own Senate oath. I remember the chill I felt when I heard the words that called me the Queen’s “Trusty and Well-beloved” Paula Simons.

I was a kid who grew up on Narnia and Middle-earth, and suddenly I felt transported, as if I were taking an oath to be sworn in at Cair Paravel or Gondor.

In that moment, I wasn’t taking an oath to some nice elderly lady. Nor was I taking an oath to be loyal to some outdated version of the empire. No. I took an oath that day to the spirit and ideal of Canada as embodied by the Crown, an oath to Her Majesty — in right of Canada.

Over the last 12 days, many Canadians have wrestled with the meaning of this moment. Some are mourning a woman who dedicated her life to service, who was one of the political and cultural titans of the 20th century, who helped Great Britain transition out of the days of empire and into the modern world. Her death, for many, marks a disorienting tectonic shift. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s a change that has subverted our certainties and upended our paradigm.

Other Canadians, though, have felt deeply ambivalent, alienated, even angry, thinking back on the legacy of conquest, colonialism, exploitation and class inequality the British Empire represented in Canada and around the world. As a modern multicultural nation, we need to acknowledge and reckon with that dark and painful past as we plan for our future together.

Walter Bagehot, let it be said, was a Victorian imperial elitist, and we should read him in that context. Still, I agree with him. Our constitutional monarchy still balances our government. The Crown helps to fulfill our deep yen for the numinous, for connection, for myth and for majesty. And for her whole life, Queen Elizabeth gave us that majesty while strictly observing her proper constitutional role.

I well remember the night I had dinner with the Queen, or rather, when the Queen and I ate dinner simultaneously in the same rather large room.

It was September 2005, and the Queen and Prince Philip were in Edmonton to mark the Alberta centennial. My husband and I were luckily invited to join the local dignitaries who were feting Their Majesties. But the banquet wasn’t in a fancy hotel or heritage building. It was in a utilitarian exhibition hall, the AgriCom, where Edmonton routinely hosted Farmfair and the Canadian Finals Rodeo. There might even have been a ghostly whiff of manure in the air.

My husband squeezed himself into his old wedding tux; I wore my annual Christmas party dress. We were seated far, far from the royal dais, but we could see the Queen perfectly. Cameras placed in front of the royal couple meant we could all watch them on big television screens as they chewed every bite.

And I thought how strange it must be to be at once the personification of the Crown and, at the same time, a very human woman, doing her best to eat a live-streamed dinner of Alberta beef without getting anything stuck in her teeth.

The price of such apotheosis is the extinguishment of self — and that was largely the price Queen Elizabeth paid, with grace and patience. She effaced her human individuality and allowed us to project onto her our own hopes and fears, our fury and our faith, whether we saw her as the embodiment of all we love about Canada, or all we hate about empire.

In life and now in death, she gave us dignity. She gave us majesty. She gave us magic. She was both the world’s granny and the symbol of our national ideals. She was the Crown. May her memory be for a blessing.

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