- by Jack Nahrgang
Christmas tradition in our household has included listening to the Queen’s annual message; with the passing of Elizabeth II, my anticipation for King Charles’ inaugural yuletide address was tinged with both sadness and curiosity.
You need not be an Anglophile nor even a student of history to realize that Elizabeth’s son faces a Herculean task of being, well, the son of Elizabeth. Since his mother’s reign will doubtfully never be duplicated, I found myself musing on the content of the new king’s commentary – theorizing that Charles might be best to acknowledge his mother’s service, and then recommend a collective strategy for tackling the problems of the coming new year. He did not disappoint.
One portion of the king’s speech struck me as particularly fitting for Canadians as our calendars flip to 2023. Charles stated that “Whatever faith you have, or whether you have none, it is in our service to others that I believe we can find hope for the future.”
I mean no disrespect to His Royal Highness, but for some reason, at the conclusion of his remarks, I recalled a scene from the film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Two peasants are digging in the dirt when King Arthur and his entourage gallop by. The first farmer says, “Must be a king.” When the second peasant asks how he knows this, the first famously replies, “He hasn’t got crap all over him.”
And he doesn’t. King Charles suffers the indignity of royal family squabbles being played out over Netflix, but he also has castles galore and a public purse from which to order a curry takeaway whenever he and Camilla feel the urge.
On the other hand, many Canadians believe that the only items being delivered to their doors in the new year are offerings from Crapfest, in varying shapes, sizes, and colours. Inflation, interest rate hikes, household costs, and food security are robbing many of us of the very “hope for the future” on which King Charles so eloquently expounded.
Like many western democracies, Canada’s finances are strained from Ukrainian war aid and health care costs, prompting many of our elected officials to reply to pleas for help from their own citizenry with ghosted emails, full voice mail boxes, or muddled statements.
So hope must begin, as it always has, with the individual. We don’t need surveys to determine need; we know which neighbours around us could use a food basket, or a jacket, or free babysitting. The kind and quantity of military aid for Ukraine might confound you, but Ukrainian refugees in our midst require furniture, and food, and English lessons to help them rebuild their lives in Canada. You know your own talents; from such reserves comes help given freely.
Because King Charles also remarked that compassion and goodness are “the essence of our community, and the very foundation of our society,” and that statement is true, whether you live a castle, or Kyiv, or Kemble.
