Prince Charles and Camilla released their royal tour itinerary for Canada. Here’s where they’ll be going

Charles, Prince of Wales, will make his 19th official visit to Canada on May 17 to 19 with his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, ahead of an important milestone in his mother’s reign. The trip comes shortly after a polarizing Caribbean tour by his son William and daughter-in-law Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. It also follows an Angus Reid poll in which a majority of Canadians supported abolishing the monarchy after the Queen dies. Here’s what you need to know.

Charles and Camilla’s Canadian itinerary

The royal couple announced their tour on April 11, promising stops in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ottawa and the Northwest Territories over three days in May. The itinerary so far includes:

• May 17: Royal couple arrive in St. John’s, with a welcoming ceremony including Indigenous performances, a Guard of Honour inspection and a speech from Charles. They will meet with Indigenous leaders when they visit the Lieutenant-Governor’s residence, where they’ll lay a marker inaugurating a local Platinum Jubilee project, a Commonwealth Walkway. Later activities include a visit to Quidi Vidi harbour.
• May 18: In Ottawa, the Prince and Duchess will join Governor-General Mary Simon for a service at the National War Memorial and meet Ukrainian community groups for prayers. They will hold a youth-literacy event at a local school, take in a performance of the RCMP Musical Ride, speak at a climate-change roundtable and spend the evening at a reception with Ms. Simon at Rideau Hall.
• May 19: Charles and Camilla head to Yellowknife and Dettah, NWT. The Duchess will go to a local school and a transitional housing centre for women fleeing intimate partner violence. Charles will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Canadian Rangers and be made an honorary member of the group; tour the Dettah Ice Road; and speak about climate change with Dene people. Then the royal couple will go to the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre to learn about Treaty 11, see demonstrations of Indigenous sports and crafts and meet local food producers.

Backstory on the royal visit

Platinum Jubilee

This February, the 96-year-old Queen reached 70 years on the throne, and public institutions in Britain, Canada and other Commonwealth realms are pulling out all the stops to celebrate. May is a propitious month for the royal visit: Victoria Day, May 23, is the sovereign’s official birthday in Canada, which Britons observe on June 11 this year. (Countries where the monarch is head of state celebrate their birthdays on legislated dates so the statutory holidays are consistent, no matter who reigns. The Queen’s actual date of birth is April 21, 1926.)

The celebrations will cap a rocky year for the Queen’s health. She contracted COVID-19 in February, and was hospitalized a few months earlier for undisclosed medical tests. Both health scares required her to cancel public activities, though she was able to make it to a March service marking the one-year anniversary of the death of her husband, Prince Philip.

William and Catherine’s Caribbean tour

The Canadian visit was announced weeks after a Platinum Jubilee tour of the Caribbean by Charles’s eldest son, William, and his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Through eight days in Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas, the Cambridges were met by protests demanding British reparations for slavery and criticism of how they re-enacted elements of the Queen’s royal tours of the 1950s and 1960s, when Caribbean nations were barely or not yet independent.

In Jamaica, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told them the country intends to sever its connection to the Crown as Barbados did late last year. Later, in the Bahamas, William said the monarchy would respect any country’s decision about its future: “relationships evolve. Friendship endures.”

The Prince Andrew affair

Active members of the Royal Family have been busy with Platinum Jubilee events this spring, but one person you won’t see with them is Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second-eldest son.

In February he settled a lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, an American who said he had sexual abused her when she was a teenager. She said they were introduced in 2001 by Jeffrey Epstein, a sex offender who died by suicide in 2019 awaiting trial on trafficking charges. Andrew backed away from public royal duties soon after Mr. Epstein’s death, and many Canadian groups removed him as their patron. This past January the Queen took further steps to strip Andrew of military affiliations, royal patronages and the title “His Royal Highness.”

Indigenous reconciliation

The last time Charles and Camilla came to Ottawa was for the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017, which many Indigenous people refused to celebrate, or chose to protest, to oppose the legacy of colonialism in Canada. This time, the royal couple will be standing beside Ms. Simon, an Inuk and the first-ever Indigenous governor-general. She’s called the tour “a chance for us to showcase the evolution of our country, our diverse and inclusive society, as well as the resilience of Indigenous communities.”

Prince Charles has visited the Arctic several times: On his debut Canadian tour in 1970, he took part in the first royal visit to Iqaluit with his parents, sister and then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau. He and Camilla have made only one joint trip to the North before this, in 2017, when they were criticized for disrespect after giggling during an Inuit throat-singing contest in Iqaluit.

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Opinion

John Fraser: The Queen turns 96 today, but that doesn’t mean the end of the monarchy is near

Kris Manjapra: For the royals, slavery is a family affair. They need to show remorse, not sorrow, for their role in its history

Alex Renton: Racism was a cornerstone of the British Empire, including Canada. Reparative justice can help to right these wrongs

Andrew Coyne: Better a hereditary head of state than any other kind

Compiled by Globe staff

With reports from The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters