King Charles will not travel to Canada for his first royal tour as Canada's monarch this year as he battles cancer. King Charles III waves as he and Queen Camilla leave Clarence House by car in London, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Frank Augstein
OTTAWA – King Charles will not travel to Canada for his first royal tour as Canada’s monarch this year, as he battles cancer.
British media reported in December that Buckingham Palace was in the early stages of planning a visit to Canada by the King and Queen Camilla this May.
Those reports were never confirmed by either the palace or the Canadian government, and the visit was never officially announced.
Canadian Heritage and the Prime Minister’s Office both say today there is no royal tour planning underway, though neither would confirm if that has changed in the last week.
One week ago, the palace said the King had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer.
May will mark one year since the King’s official coronation following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in September 2022.
King Charles is 75.
His cancer diagnosis followed a brief hospital stay in late January for the treatment of an enlarged prostate.
An official statement released by Buckingham Palace on Feb. 5 said the cancer was “a separate issue of concern” that arose during that hospitalization and for which the King underwent testing.
The palace has not confirmed what kind of cancer the King has but said he will cancel “public-facing duties” while he undergoes treatment.
The lack of detail on the diagnosis and the fast trip to London last week by King Charles’s younger son, Prince Harry, raised concern among many royal watchers about the gravity of the diagnosis.
Prince Harry stepped back as a working member of the Royal Family in 2000 and now lives in California with his wife, Meghan Markle. He flew to London from Los Angeles for only about 24 hours and had a brief visit with his father.
The couple is scheduled to be in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C., later this week for an event to launch the one-year countdown to the Invictus Games in 2025.
King Charles has previously made 16 official visits to Canada, but all of them were when he was the Prince of Wales, before he assumed the throne.
His last visit was in May 2022 with his wife, Queen Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall.
They spent three days in Canada with stops in St. John’s, Ottawa and Northwest Territories.
Since becoming king, Charles has made just five foreign trips – to Germany, Romania, France, Kenya and the United Arab Emirates.
During her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth visited Canada 22 times, but her first official visit as queen did not come until five years after she first took the throne.
British media had also recently reported that King Charles was set to travel to Samoa for a heads of Commonwealth governments meeting in October. The trip was reported to also include stops in Australia and New Zealand.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2024.
