Stu Hardiker of Medicine Hat poses with his framed letters of invite to attend the season's ball at the palace with Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal family. - NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Many people can say they caught a glimpse of the Queen or shook her hand on a walk about, but not many can say they were a dance partner.
Stu Hardiker, a former British Army veteran who retired to Medicine Hat, comes very close, though technically he danced with Prince Phillip.
It was at a Highland Ball at Balmoral Castle while Hardiker served on assigned with the 1st Battalion Royal Scots, protecting the monarch during her holiday time at the estate.
That included sweeping out stables, helping on hunting excursions, marching the Queen’s car to church each Sunday. Each year several members of the guard were invited to attend the season’s ball at the palace.
Hardiker, then in his late teens, was so lucky, and even took a turn in a highland fling performed with the Duke of Edinburgh.
“It became apparent later on just how unusual it was, but at the time it was just a job,” said Hardiker this week. “Looking back, to say you spent a night in the ballroom with the queen and her ladies in waiting; It’s just something that not many people can say.”
Many are reflecting on the life and reign of Elizabeth II this past week after her death at age 96. Her funeral will take place on Monday morning at 3 a.m. MT.
Hatters reached out to the News with their memories, chance interactions and lasting impressions of the leader of the Commonwealth and Canada’s head of State.
Hardiker’s tale is the most personal.
The product of Edinburgh says he was no stranger to pageantry and pomp of guarding the Royal family or life in the army.
He spent three months in the Queen’s company, working along side her and her family on a country estate.
“She was very down to earth, and Princess Anne was fantastic,” Hardiker remembers.
“You could tell the family just felt very comfortable there, that they could relax and be themselves.”
Hatter Linda Robert’s mother was a war bride from London who met her husband while working as a nurse, but the couple returned from Saskatchewan for a visit at the time of the 1953 Coronation.
That led to a watching the ceremony on television (“a first for all of us, a nine-inch, black and white,” she said), but also an in-person brush with the new monarch days later.
They were out for a walk in London when crowds gathered on the street, and it became clear the royal car would by travelling by.
Crowds swelled, and Roberts was hoisted onto her father’s shoulders.
“My mom had a granny who was deaf, so mom had learned to read lips,” recalled Roberts, who was six years old with auburn ringlets. “She could see the Queen nudge Phillip to say ‘look at that lovely little redhead,” Roberts recalled.
“Mom told me to wave back, and from what she told me I yelled ‘Hi, Queenie!'”
Another local daughter of a war bride, Pat Smith, had a grandmother who lived and worked at Buckingham Palace. Smith was 18 and in the Canadian Air Force reserves near Hamilton when the Queen visited. She was part of the welcoming and departing ceremonies at the airport, with a parade through the city in between.
Rod Kleckner joined the Navy right out of high school in Medicine Hat wound up as part of the honour guard during the Queen’s 1959 tour of the Maritimes.
“I was proud to be there and proud to be in the honour guard,” said Kleckner, an Able Seaman 73 years ago when the Royal couple visited a naval base in Halifax.
“We all had to be between five-foot-11 and six-foot-one, and a certain weight,”
That’s so they wouldn’t have a tall guy then a short guy, or a skinny guy in there.
“It was quite something.”
In 1951, Hatter Nelson Hogg was one of a handful of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides from Medicine Hat invited to a special “Chuckwagon Luncheon” in the Stampede Corral hosted by the City of Calgary in honour of a Royal visit.
“She was coming down the row about 15 or 20 feet away. I was all ready to tell her about my badges, but she never made it to me,” Hogg joked this week.
John Cherwonogrodzky was a university student in London, Ont., when the Queen arrived on a Royal visit in 1973. From the itinerary published in the local paper, he noted an anomaly that she was to be dropped off by limousine at city hall, but was due at a luncheon a few blocks away. He intrepidly hopped over the edge of a parkade then sat on a retaining wall.
“To my great surprise, she did walk across the city centre all alone, about 10 feet from where I was sitting,” said Cherwonogrodzky, recalling that the queen looked more petite from the vantage point and wore a lime green outfit and hat.
“I said something stupid, like ‘How’s it going, eh?
“She looked out of the corner of her eye and kept walking.”
Later in life, Cherwonogrodzky received a thank you card from Buckingham Palace after he forwarded a copy of his book.
Another thank you card is a treasured keepsake of Marilyn Krause.
She was only 12 in late 1962 when she and a friend wrote the queen to ask if they could become pen pals with Prince Charles, then 11.
“We were quite fascinated with the Royal family at that time,” said Krause.
The reply was inside a envelope forwarded by the Governor General of Canada.
With the Queen’s seal upon it, a second envelope included thanks for well-wishes, but also regrets.
“It is not possible for the Prince of Wales to reply to letters from people he does not already know,” read the card.
“As a 12-year-old, I was disappointed,” said Krause. “The letters are a prize possession.”
