Canadian Titles Debate - Exceptions and Anomalies

Exceptions and Anomalies

Even in the immediate aftermath of the Nickle Resolution adoption in 1921, titular honours were granted to subjects of the King who remained residents of Canada, and such honours were passed on to their legal inheritors. The Nickle Resolution was not an effective instrument to establish Canada's desire to end the granting of titular honours to Canadians. It would take later Prime Ministers to do that.

The prime minister at the time of the resolution, Sir Robert Laird Borden, GCMG had been knighted in 1914, five years before the adoption of the resolution.

Canadian steel magnate, Sir James Hamet Dunn was created a baronet by King George V on 13 January 1921, and his son Sir Philip Dunn, 2nd Baronet, inherited his father's baronetcy. At the time, the same parliament that had adopted the Nickle Resolution was still in session. It follows that such a resolution, had it had any binding nature, would have been in effect at least until the dissolution of the 13th parliament on 14 October 1921.

The Government of Canada made no objection when, near the end of the Second World War, British prime minister, Winston Churchill, recommended that the King bestow a knighthood on Sir William Stephenson. Churchill described the honour he sought from the King for Stephenson as "one dear to my heart", such was Churchill's sense of gratitude for Stephenson's wartime intelligence work. Years later, Sir William was given Canada's highest honour in being made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1979.

Also honoured with knighthood following the Nickle Resolution was Sir Frederick Banting, the Canadian medical doctor who co-won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery of insulin. This knighthood was awarded by King George V in 1934.

Another significant example of government indecision over the matter of titular honours involves former Canadian governor general Vincent Massey. While on a visit to Canada in August 1954, Prince Philip told Massey the Queen wished to make him a Knight of the Garter. The most senior of the Realm's orders of chivalry, Massey would have been the first non-Briton to receive the Garter. Then-prime minister Louis St. Laurent was cool to the proposal, but agreed to take the matter under advisement. Shortly after coming to power in 1957, John Diefenbaker was initially receptive, but ultimately changed his mind and so informed the Queen in 1960. Just weeks later, Her Majesty honoured Massey with the more rare Royal Victorian Chain.

A different example was that of Sir Edwin Leather, KCMG, KCVO, LLD, the Toronto-born Governor of Bermuda. He arrived in Britain with the Canadian Army in 1940, and stayed on after World War II to become a Conservative Member of Parliament. After the murder of Sir Richard Sharples, the Bermudian viceroy, Sir Edwin was appointed to the vacant colonial governorship at the recommendation of the government of British Prime Minister Edward Heath. When Sir Edwin was knighted in 1962, since he had not lived in Canada since 1940, he was not made to renounce his citizenship in his native country.

In addition to this extraterritorial anomaly, even today the Governor General of Canada is actively involved in the creation of knights and dames via one of the recognized orders (see Order of Merit) within the Canadian honours system. His or Her Excellency presides over the Canadian branch of the Order of St John and confers knighthoods and damehoods on some of its members in ceremonies at which the Governor General performs the act of investing new recipients with their honour. Persons so honoured are, however, officially prohibited from publicly employing the usual knightly accolade of "Sir" or "Dame" followed by their personal and family names, and the claim is made that the honour of knighthood or damehood is conferred without the Queen or Her Governor General's concession of any appellative accolade, thus avoiding the bestowal of any titular honour.

During the premiership of Tony Blair at least two persons holding British citizenship were granted titular honours by the Crown before the Black peerage issue, which brought the matter to the Canadian prime minister's attention.

In February 2004, the Department of International Trade announced the impending visit to Sydney of Sir Terry Matthews, with a press release that included the following passage: "Sir Terry is the Chairman of Mitel Networks.... In 1994, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours, 2001."

On 2 November 1999, Canadian Senator Anne Cools brought to the Senate of Canada's notice the discrepancy in policy on Orders for English Canadians, and Orders for French Canadians:

"Honourable senators, the sovereign of France, the President, conferred the Ordre Royale de la Légion d'Honneur on Quebecer Robert Gagnon just two weeks ago, and on Premier René Lévesque in 1977, while he was Premier of Quebec. No doubt Premier Lévesque would have frowned on any anglophone premier being knighted "Sir" by the Queen of Canada."

In addition, on 4 November 1999, she brought to the Senate's notice the fact that in the first decade alone after the Nickle Resolution was debated, there were:

"many distinguished Canadians who have received 646 orders and distinctions from foreign non-British, non-Canadian sovereigns between 1919 and February 1929."

Statistics are not available on the total numbers of titular and non-titular honours conferred on Canadians throughout their country's history.

Some Canadian title holders do not employ their British- or French-derived titles in Canada. One such example being Kenneth Thomson who from his father's death in 1976 until his own death in 2006 held the hereditary peerage Baron Thomson of Fleet. Thomson once stated in an interview "In London I'm Lord Thomson, in Toronto I'm Ken. I have two sets of Christmas cards and two sets of stationery. You might say I'm having my cake and eating it too. I'm honouring a promise to my father by being Lord Thomson, and at the same time I can just be Ken," It is noteworthy that not employing his title in Canada was his personal choice, rather than the result of any government legislation.