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Last week, on International Women’s Day, finance minister Bill Morneau announced that the 2018 issue of Canadian banknotes would feature an “iconic Canadian woman” selected by public nominations.

“It’s now been almost 150 years that we’ve not had a Canadian woman on our banknotes,” said Morneau.

But while Patricia was a born-in-England member of British royalty, she was technically a Canadian citizen by the laws of the era.

Under the 1910 Immigration Act, Canadian citizenship was automatically extended to any British subject who had spent more than three years in the country, provided they hadn’t spent part of it in prison or an “asylum for the insane.”

Patricia sailed to Canada in 1911 soon after her father, the Duke of Connaught, was appointed the country’s governor general. She had thus racked up six years in the Dominion by the time her banknote was first issued.

A granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Patricia was already a well-known European socialite by the time circumstances brought her to the frontier lands of early 20th century Canada.

In a 1908 Los Angeles Times story, for instance, Patricia had been called the most “incorrigible flirt in Europe,” with suitors all across European royalty. Historians have since called her the “very pinnacle of smart society” when she set sail for Ottawa.

T. W. Loveridge, an Assistant Professor History at Royal Military College, described her in a note to the National Post as a mixture of Princess Diana and the Duchess of Cambridge.