The Invisible Crown: The First Principle of Canadian Government

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of history at York University, the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s, and the author of The Good
Fight.

In The Invisible Crown, political scientist David Smith is not arguing
the case for the monarchy, an increasingly futile task in an era when
the royals seemed determined to do their level best to make a mockery of
the institution. Instead, his subject is the place of the Crown in the
Canadian system—the influence exercised by the Governor General and
the Lieutenant-Governors, and the place and role of the Crown in the
courts, in the bureaucracy, and in national symbols. To Smith, the Crown
is present everywhere, its influence almost wholly to the good, in
creating and maintaining what he calls the “compound monarchies”
that comprise Canadian federalism. Even though this is not the
author’s (stated) intent, his complex argument is sure to bolster the
case put forward by Canada’s monarchists, though there seems no reason
whatsoever that the same system could not exist even in the absence of a
Canadian monarch. As Australia apparently moves toward republicanism,
Canada may well have the opportunity to watch another Dominion as it
adapts to the modern world.