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Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Shelby Kramp-Neuman

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Hastings—Lennox and Addington
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 66%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $121,555.68

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 96 - Sep/15/22
Mrs. Shelby Kramp-Neuman (Hastings—Lennox and Addington, CPC)
  • Sep/15/22 2:06:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to pay tribute to the icon we lost a week ago, the only Canadian head of state most of us have ever known and a magnificent woman that many of us have had the honour to meet or see in person over the past 70 years. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was so much more than just a figurehead, so much more than just our head of state. She represented an institution that has played an integral role in the development and creation of Canada, an institution whose ties to our nation bind more tightly than any other. She manifested and personified the Crown. Today, we have heard and will continue to hear many moving speeches about what Her Majesty meant and continues to mean to us here in this place and to our constituents across this great land. The Crown, Her Majesty, is many things to many people, but I do believe it has a unique link to Hastings—Lennox and Addington. I represent two counties that were founded by United Empire Loyalists, people who lost everything south of the current border when they sided with the King during the American Revolution. The Queen was special to them and she came back multiple times to return that respect. The King had promised United Empire Loyalists and their descendants religious freedom when they came to the colonies and delivered on that promise over many decades, keeping the colonies safe from the religious conflicts of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. The King had made promises to the indigenous peoples around the Great Lakes and delivered on those as well, reiterated in the Proclamation of 1763, so Mohawk, Iroquois and others supported the King in the revolutionary cataclysm. The integral role that many of our indigenous neighbours played in the creation of Canada and, in particular, to building the communities in Loyalist Township is, unfortunately, too often forgotten, but nonetheless it cannot be overstated. To them, I say meegwetch. It was these peoples, drawn originally from more than two dozen countries and religious backgrounds, and on the surface having only heavily accented English in common, that made up the 10,000 Loyalists, for example, who founded what became Ontario, carved out of the western flank of the colony of Quebec. Like modern-day refugees, they came from established lives and towns and villages in what is now called New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, as well as from other revolting colonies, to start all over again here. The King's surveyors were sent here in September 1783 to establish the boundaries on land grants to the Loyalists, and those boundaries continue today, many reflecting the roads we travel across Ontario, the layout of our streets and towns, the connecting byways and the locations of town squares and great public buildings. In Hastings, the first boatloads of Loyalists were Mohawk, who travelled from Fort Hunter in the Mohawk Valley in New York state. They landed in May of 1784, and they proudly have a royal chapel where they honour that arrival and the Crown they supported then and now. I had the great privilege of attending the ceremony honouring this landing earlier this year with Chief Don Maracle of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte. The townships created in Hastings—Lennox and Addington were given names to honour their King. In Lennox and Addington, which every person here today has either driven through, passed over via train or been able to see from the air, whether they realize it or not, the townships along Lake Ontario and the Bay of Quinte were named for the children of King George III. Adolphustown, for example, was where the first non-Mohawk landed in June of 1784 and why Ontario proclaimed June 19 United Empire Loyalists' Day. The road built from Kingston to Toronto knitted together the smaller roads built from the period of 1798 to 1801. It passes through Adolphustown, Fredericksburg and Ernesttown, which are three more of the townships named for the children of King George. Municipal reorganization and consolidation in the 1990s placed the first two in Greater Napanee and Ernesttown became Loyalist Township. It proudly contains Bath, Odessa and Amherstview. It was to Amherstview, where Gord Downie grew up, where Queen Elizabeth came in September 1984 to proudly cut the ribbon of the Loyalist Parkway. This was the new name for the old roadway that had been known by different names along the route: Kingston Road, Bath Road, Toronto Road and Danforth Road, among others. In Lennox and Addington, it was officially called the Loyalist Parkway. When one passes through the ceremonial gates at Amherstview along Highway 33, one travels over the exact spot where the Queen stood 38 years ago to thank the ancestors, the Loyalists, before those gathered that day, for the loyalty they showed to King George III and their critical role in creating Canada. We all know what our beloved Queen has meant to every Canadian, but in my riding hearts are beating differently today as we remember and recall what she and the monarchy have meant and continue to mean to us. It is not just in the foundation and populating of our area, her ribbon cutting and kind words in Amherstview, her 1973 whistle stop at Napanee or when her yacht Britannia carried her in our waters by Amherst Island, where the Royal George escaped an American attack in the War of 1812. It is not just the local visits to next door Kingston in 1959, 1973 or in 1976, when she to opened the sailing Olympics, an event which my constituents and their parents attended in vast numbers. No, the Queen was greater than all of that. She was an icon of service and steadfastness in the face of adversity, the one to whom we all pledged allegiance and the one who we could all imagine sharing tea with. God bless her memory and our memories of Queen Elizabeth II as we honour the second Elizabethan era. Long live the King.
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