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This included a military alliance with the Mohawk nation that had been negotiated when the British were fighting the French, but which remained in effect throughout the American Revolution. When that war ended with a Declaration of Independence, the allied First Nations, including the Mohawks, joined the other British Loyalists and moved north to Canada. This turned out to be a rather smart move, as the alternative was being tarred and feathered at best, or, at worst, if you were aboriginal something appallingly close to total annihilation.

In 1867, after a series of civil and perfectly unrevolutionary debates, the contemporary Canadian state was born peacefully, under the crown, and as a federation that now encompasses 10 provinces and three territorial mandates; or, rather, nine provinces, three very northern amorphous entities, one quasi-state called Quebec and in excess of 634 First Nations (and that’s not counting the Inuit or Metis, who each now constitute a kind of nation). Don’t ask me to explain how the whole thing hangs together and works, but somehow it does and at the head of it all is the Queen of Canada.

Canada, however, is a constitutional monarchy that’s not exactly seething with royalist fervour. I think the truth of the matter is that 10 to 15 per cent of the country is made up of people a lot like me: romantic constitutional monarchists. Perhaps an equivalent percentage are republicans who occasionally go ballistic at the thought that we are still unable to elect our own head of state. The rest are practical and accept the status quo because it seems to work. Yet, in Canada, there is something so fundamental about the role the crown plays that should trump every argument for severing our links. It has to do with the historic and continuing relationship between the crown and the First Nations. It totally bewilders many non-aboriginal Canadians. They just don’t get it. Why would such a downtrodden people feel loyal to such a symbol of colonial oppression and allegedly reactionary actions?