On the surface it might appear an open, liberal country, but the reality of life there can be numbing

Yes, it’s the capital of ‘woke’. But is Canada the best royal retreat for Harry and Meghan?

Yes, it’s the capital of ‘woke’. But is Canada the best royal retreat for Harry and Meghan?

As Britain hyperventilates in the wake of a hard Megxit, the duchess has fled to Toronto. My home town, it’s rumoured, is the place where the couple ultimately plan to settle. It makes sense, I suppose. Meghan has friends there – loyal friends with big houses and equally sizeable Instagram platforms.

Though, obviously, that’s hardly the point. The move, we are meant to understand, is an act of political defiance. A casting off of the royal yoke. The duchess’s sudden defection was in the name of “progress” – a value she was disappointed to find insufficiently shared by her fusty in-laws. Who knew?

The move will be tricky, but worth it for the privilege of bringing up Archie in the playground of pluralism, openness and tolerance that is high-society Toronto. Or it would be, if the place was actually like that.

I dislike the term “woke” and bristle every time it’s unthinkingly applied to Meghan by rightwing commentators. Yet increasingly I find it seductive – not as a sneering pejorative but for the way it sums up a kind of progressive narrowness of vision that exists in many quarters, but is particularly notable in my homeland.

Happily, Canada’s flaws have little to do with the big stuff. Education, healthcare and the economy are all good, on the whole. But if what the duke and duchess are after is true cultural freedom as opposed to freedom-as-economic-privilege (which they already have in abundance) it is probably not their best bet.

The key to Canada’s wokeness lies not in its willingness to break rules but a slavish devotion to them

Contentious, complicated issues, particularly those that strain conflicting belief-systems on the left, are not as openly debated in Canada’s media or political arena as they are here. Instead, the way ahead is to flag up the virtuous nature of your views. The greater diversity of opinion which (at least in the past) attracted outsiders to Britain – and the chaos and humour that came with it – is what liberal Canada lacks, and this is bemoaned by many of its best artists and thinkers.

Often privately, that is, behind closed doors. There’s good reason for this, since in recent years a handful of Canada’s most eminent public intellectuals – Margaret Atwood among them – have faced startling hostility for the crime of expressing opinions that differed from the consensus. In Atwood’s case, it was for arguing for due process for those accused of sexual misconduct.

Canadians, even many of the country’s so-called “thought leaders”, are more apt to follow the unofficial national motto: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Though the thought-leader-in chief, Justin Trudeau, was brilliant last week, offering private condolences to the many Canadians bereaved by the shooting down of Ukrainian Airlines flight 752, while publicly calling for transparency and calm.

Presiding over moments of national grief with empathy and quiet moral certitude in exchange for uncomplicated public love is something he does well. Perhaps Meghan, like her late mother-in-law Diana, is made of the same stuff. But one always needs to ask whether it’s the need for public adulation that drives the “virtue”, rather than the other way around. Either way, Canada can be as weirdly stultifying and codified as one of those small liberal arts campuses where the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low.

Ironically, many of Canada’s core values – fear of causing offence, tolerance of boredom, general aversion to controversy of any kind – are taken straight from the Buckingham Palace playbook. This is not by coincidence, but by design. There is no country I can think of more unwavering in its devotion and loyalty to the Queen and everything she stands for (silence, fortitude, politeness).

Until I moved to London I’d never heard the term “republican” used to describe anything other than a rightwing American. This is not so surprising once you understand the key to Canada’s wokeness, which lies not in its willingness to break rules but in a slavish devotion to them – a cleaving to the safety of duty and protocol, however dull, underscored by colonial guilt. It’s a feeling the Queen knows in her bones.

Meghan? I doubt it.

Leah McLaren is a Canadian journalist and novelist based in London