The warmth felt for her is there for all to see in a photo from the Vancouver Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre – she looks happy and comfortable in their collective embrace.
That warmth is not being felt by everyone.
Canadians are famously polite – but the media frenzy around the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is proving to be the thing that gets some of them riled up.
Being heckled in the street is an occupational hazard for news crews, it is unexpected when it comes from the nicest people on the planet.
It is clear, in British Columbia at least, that Canadians are taking very seriously their role as protectors of the royal exiles.
One couple were determined to make their point, interrupting our filming to tell us: “The media drove them out of England. You should just leave them alone.”
Numerous business owners declined, politely of course, to talk about the royals at all. Some who have spoken publicly about their interactions with the couple, they said, have suffered a nasty backlash for doing so.
There is an odd mood: they are delighted and fascinated on the one hand but wary and defensive on the other, conscious that this circus might become the new normal.
Whatever media interest there has been on Vancouver Island, the duchess has on the whole very successfully avoided it behind the gates of a private estate in the town of North Saanich. She was photographed only as she stepped out in public to board a seaplane bound for Vancouver.
And plenty of people in this rugged and remote outpost, while respecting the couple’s privacy, are very interested in discussing what their arrival will mean.
John Gill, who moved to Canada from the UK 65 years ago, said the couple should follow his example and earn their own living. He used some colourful language to describe how hard they should work.
Clutching his shivering Pomeranian called Samson, he said it wasn’t right for the couple to expect the Canadian tax-payer to foot the bill for the new life. Others we spoke to share that view.
The financial implications are just one of the evolving issues surrounding the couple’s touted move west.
An editorial in Canada’s biggest selling newspaper suggested the country’s government should refuse the couple permissions to settle here if they remain members of the Royal Family.
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“If they were ordinary private citizens, plain old Harry and Meghan from Sussex, they would be welcome,” thundered the Globe and Mail.
“But this country’s unique monarchy and, its delicate yet essential place in our constitutional system, means that a royal resident – the Prince is sixth in the line of succession – is not something that Canada can allow. It breaks an unspoken constitutional taboo.”
The royals are fine at a distance, in effect, but not on our own doorstep.
For Canadians, the sooner some clarity comes about exactly how the Sussexes will make it work, the better.
