(2 of 9)
This royal tour is also billed as an effort to get to out-of-the-way places—so the Queen was soon off to Schefferville, an iron-mining village near the Labrador border. She greeted chiefs of the Montagnais-Naskapi Indians, gave one of them a reassuring smile when he lost his balance while curtseying in his blue, fur-trimmed parka. At the U.S.'s Harmon airbase at Stephenville, Nfld., a Ford convertible assigned for royal use failed to start. Prince Philip cracked: "Too bad we don't have a British car"—whereupon the royal couple transferred to a Cadillac. At week's end, the Queen and Prince Philip boarded the 5,769-ton royal yacht Britannia at Seven Islands on the St. Lawrence River, began a leisurely two-day voyage to Quebec City.
Elizabeth II will be in Canada for 44 days, will make a one-day jaunt south of the border to Chicago, whose Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson in the 1920s threatened to punch the Queen's grandfather, George V, "in the snoot." At the trip's high point this week, President Eisenhower joins the Queen aboard Britannia to dedicate the 182-mile St. Lawrence Seaway, which links the U.S.-Canadian Great Lakes with the world's deep water.
"I Love the Queen." In touring her domain and greeting her subjects, Elizabeth II is merely doing what comes naturally. Since her coronation in 1953, she has traveled 80,000 miles, far more than any other monarch in history. In 1954 she survived the loyal ecstasy of a million Australians in Sydney, who broke police lines eight times to surround the royal motorcade, shouting "Good on you, Liz and Phil!" She went to Ceylon even though nationalist agitators collected 150,000 signatures asking her to stay away. In Nigeria, without blinking, she watched the fiery charge of thousands of spear-waving warriors and accepted the homage of such local chieftains as the Rwang Pam of Birom, the Atta of Igala, the Tor of Tiv and the Och of Idoma.
She kept her royal composure drinking soapy-tasting kava in Fiji and eating breadfruit in Tonga, while laka laka dancers whirled about her to the eerie music of nose flutes. In Jamaica, the Queen was unruffled when an idolater threw his cream-linen jacket at her feet and prostrated himself, crying, as the police hauled him away, "I want the Queen to walk on my coat—I love the Queen!" Rarely did the royal nerves give way, but once, in New South Wales, the Queen and Prince Philip seemed to be squabbling as their closed car whisked through a town, and a group of deaf-mute bystanders swore they lipread Philip's retort to Elizabeth: "Come off it, sausage."
At 33, Elizabeth II is a handsome woman of 5 ft. 3 in., brown-haired and blue-eyed, her head held royally on a swanlike neck. Her smooth skin, spring-in-England coloring and regal carriage give her subjects cause to call her beautiful. Her voice is clear-toned, with a still youthful ring; her movements are slow and assured. She wears her royal costumes and glittering gowns with majesty and grace; yet in tweeds and low-heeled shoes she gives out a no-nonsense warmth that can put any housewife in Winnipeg or Salisbury at ease.