Canada's Queen: Elizabeth II: A Celebration of Her Majesty's Friendship with the People of Canada.

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Elizabeth II has been to Canada 22 times, and always photographers of the Canadian Press accompanied her. From CP’s vast picture archive comes this judiciously chosen selection of photos, almost all taken in Canada—pictures, we are told, that “may be purchased for personal use.” They are accompanied by a brief but informative text which starts with a concise biography of the present royal family and concludes with a timeline from the Queen’s birth to her 80th birthday. The pictures are arranged in 10 chapters, not chronologically but by theme. One chapter shows Her Majesty “Among Canadian Icons”; another deals with “The Queen’s Family in Canada”; another, “Canada’s First Nations.” There is even a chapter called “Her Hats”—23 pictures. The section titled “The Queen and Her Ministers” is somewhat misnamed, because many of its photos show the Queen with her Governors General and their provincial counterparts. A small curiosity: the copyright and title pages give the title as Our Queen, but the dust jacket and the spine of the book itself call the book Canada’s Queen. (A 1953 Act of Parliament proclaimed Elizabeth as “Queen of Canada.”) By any name, this is a charming volume, but best enjoyed in chapter-sized bites. Nearly 350 photos of smiling faces can be a bit much at one sitting.