July just got a little more regal.
Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, are set to visit Winnipeg on July 3, Premier Greg Selinger announced Wednesday.
“On behalf of all Manitobans, I will be delighted to welcome the Queen back to our province,” said Selinger in a news release.
“Manitobans have a long, proud and very positive relationship with the Royal Family and we are very pleased that Her Majesty has decided to include Manitoba in her next visit to Canada.”
Organizers may want to break out the monarch-strength mosquito spray to protect the Queen to avoid a repeat of the sensationalized criticism they received from the British press the last time Her Majesty visited in 2002.
In October of that year, she and Prince Phillip became stranded on a water taxi at The Forks, prompting British media to dress down Canadian organizers for the mishap and for not properly helping the royals deal with “frigid” weather.
For their upcoming Canadian tour, the royal couple will arrive in Canada on June 28 and will also visit Ontario and Nova Scotia. They will spend Canada Day in Ottawa.
The summer visit will be the Queen’s 22nd official trip to Canada. Her first visit was in 1957.
The royal couple was last in the country in 2005, when they toured Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The visit comes at time when polls show Canadians split over continuation of our links to the British Monarchy.
A Leger Marketing poll conducted last fall found 45% of Canadians outside of Quebec favoured cutting ties to the Queen while 44% saw our links to the monarchy as a great tradition that should be maintained.
In Quebec, more than 80% surveyed were in favour of severing ties to the Crown.
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