Canadian titles debate

The Canadian titles debate has been ongoing since the presentation to the Canadian House of Commons of the Nickle Resolution in 1917. This resolution marked the earliest attempt to establish a Canadian government policy requesting the sovereign not to grant knighthoods, baronetcies, and peerages to Canadians and set the precedent for later policies restricting Canadians from accepting titles from foreign countries. Dissatisfaction with the British honours system led to the gradual creation of a separate system for Canada.

The Nickle Resolution was a motion brought forward in 1917 by Conservative M.P. William Folger Nickle in the Canadian House of Commons. There had been controversy before the end of World War I over the honouring of Canadians—especially the appointment of Sam Hughes as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (a non-hereditary honour) in 1915 and the elevation of Hugh Graham as the Baron Atholstan (a hereditary honour)—and the qualifications of recipients. Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden disapproved of the process by which Canadians were nominated for honours and in March 1917 drafted a policy stating that all names had to be vetted by the prime minister before the list was sent to Westminster. Nickle, however, at the same time, alleged that the granting of hereditary titles to Canadians was itself inconsistent with democratic values. Nickle's detractors, however, charged him with being motivated more by spite and chagrin over his failed attempt to obtain a knighthood for his father-in-law, Daniel Gordon, the principal of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Regardless, Nickle successfully moved a resolution through the House calling for an address be made to King George V requesting that he no longer grant hereditary peerages and knighthoods to Canadians and that all such titles held by Canadians become extinct upon the death of the incumbent. The motion was carried by the House of Commons, though Nickle himself voted against the version passed; it was not advanced to the Senate, and no address to the King was ever made.

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