1939 royal tour of Canada

The 1939 royal tour of Canada was a cross-Canada royal tour by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, lasting from May 17 to June 15, 1939, including a visit to the United States June 7–12. It was one of the first visits of a reigning monarch to Canada (in 1926, Queen Marie of Romania also visited Canada), and also the first time a British monarch had set foot in the United States. The royal couple visited every Canadian province as well as the Dominion of Newfoundland. The tour was an enormous event, attracting huge crowds at each new city.

The royals arrived in Quebec City and travelled west by rail through the country, visiting most of the major cities and finally arriving in Vancouver. Then they travelled through the United States, along with Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King. The tour ended with a visit to the Maritimes and Newfoundland, departing from Halifax.

This tour marked the first time that the sovereign's official Canadian birthday was marked with the monarch himself present in the country; the occasion was marked on Parliament Hill with a celebration and a Trooping of the Colour. In 1985, during a tour of Canada, Queen Elizabeth, by then the Queen Mother, stated in a speech: "It is now some 46 years since I first came to this country with the King, in those anxious days shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. I shall always look back upon that visit with feelings of affection and happiness. I think I lost my heart to Canada and Canadians, and my feelings have not changed with the passage of time."

Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir, in an effort to foster Canadian identity, conceived of a royal tour by the country's monarchs; an idea that the official royal visit historian, Gustave Lanctot, opined in his official account of the visit, "probably grew out of the knowledge that at his coming Coronation, George VI was to assume the additional title of King of Canada." Tweedsmuir's desire was to demonstrate with living example the fact of Canada's status as an independent kingdom, having Canadians "see their King performing royal functions, supported by his Canadian ministers." Prime Minister Mackenzie King, while in London for the coronation in May 1937, formally consulted with the King on the matter. According to biographer J. A. Smith, the task for Tweedsmuir, and the Canadian government, was "how to translate the Statute of Westminster into the actualities of a tour... since this was the first visit of a reigning monarch to a Dominion, and precedents were being made. According to the official Royal Tour historian Gustave Lanctot, George VI was to be present in Canada as a living example of Canada's status as an independent kingdom.

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