-TSS-

I'm beginning to think that for many Canadians Trudeau is becoming like a reverse version of Trump. I mean he will be talked about long after he has gone.

Big countries are resented for meddling in the affairs of smaller ones but yet they are expected to have an active role in international politics. It's a fine line to get that balance right. Germany for example is a European superpower but it is not interested in having a global role. That's why it is often criticized for not acting like a country of its size is expected to.

I think that even though Biden is evidently senile it is still perfectly possible that if you know hundreds and hundreds of people you may have forgotten that one of them has just died.

I never really thought about it before but as I checked the geographic area of the EU is only half of that of Canada. Yet we can't agree amongst our very different selves agree on almost anything so no wonder that even though Canada is a bit more united than the EU even Canada doesn't always work like a small country. Btw, as canada is currently the second biggest country in the world by landmass be prepared to become the first as Russia is inevitably going to collapse and break apart into smaller countries.

Charles is not going to make it to his mother's age but you will have to put up with him at least 10 years.

Despite its huge geographic size, the second biggest in the world, do Canadians think of their country as a small country because of the next door neighbor? In Europe a country of 40 million people would most definitely not be regarded as a small country.

Again? They just had one recently. That meaning in 1999. The republic lost not because people would love the monarchy but they didn't want the kind of republic which was offered to them.

Life goes on. Remarkable really how fast after Monday the Queen's death has disappeared from the headlines. It's old news. Back to Ukraine and the cost of living-crisis.

If it took something like 10 minutes to queue to see the coffin it would make sense but 10 hours queueing to spend only few seconds to see the coffin sounds absolutely not a sensible thing to do at all. Yet there are tens of thousands of people who do just that.

I don't think there will ever be such advancement in the field of medicine so that 96 would be an average life-expectancy.

Jamaica and the Bahamas are considering to become republics. Perhaps it is the right choice for them. You can still be in the Commonwealth despite being republic. Not sure though whether the Commonwealth means anything these days any more.

Judging by the past week I can't help noticing that if I were a Brit and I wanted to know what else is going on in the world I would have to turn to foreign news. The British media is all about one topic only at this time.

Does the Monarch have a veto on who Canada chooses as the Governor-General? Canada, Australia, NZ etc are de facto republics anyway.

Anyone who lives in London is well advice to take a holiday and go somewhere else until Tuesday.

You complain how the government in Canada effectively chooses the GG. However, it is just the same in countries where the President is just a formal figurehead like in Germany or Italy. In those countries the President is elected by their respective Parliaments, which means that the parties in the majority at the time get their preferred choice.

As we in Finland have nothing to do with the British Empire to us the news of the Queen's death really is like an old sweet granny passing away. However, there are millions of people in this world for whom the Queen absolutely was everything else than an old sweet granny.

I was listening to the TV-commentary and I wonder is it just a question of differences between languages but how the commentary was about the Queen leaving Balmoral for the last time and the Queen making a journey across the country. I guess that doesn't sound strange in English but in my language if you speak like that about a dead person doing things it just sounds hilarious.

If I were British I would support keeping the monarchy but if I were Canadian, Australian etc I think I would prefer some boring and meaningless President if he or she is from my own country. However, I don't think this is a huge issue which people think about all the time. On the other hand, even if a President is just a nominal leader he or she is some retired politician and politicians tend to be divisive and even despised.

Strange how strong the connection between Canada and the British momarchy really is. After all, culturally speaking Canada and the UK are far more apart from each other than the UK and Australia/New Zealand are even though Canada is geographically closer to the UK than those two southern hemisphere countries.

It has been said that monarchy is a system which doesn't work in theory but works in practice- However, if constitutional monarchy didn't exist I don't think anybody would propose espousing such a system.

She did her nation proud. The Brits can be proud of having had her as their head of state. There are worse examples around the world. However, I don't believe that that there is ever going to be such a breakthrough in the field of medicine that the age of 96 would be the average life-expectancy. When the time is up it is time to go.

The Queen didn't have nominal political power but she had clout. A lot of it. I doubt Charles will have as much clout.

23 years ago in the Australian referendum the republic lost because they were offered a republic whereby the GG would just become President but that's all. People wanted a republic where the President is the real political leader like in the USA. Does anybody think the US-system is something to go for?

As far as I'm aware the arrangement whereby the British monarch is the head of state of other otherwise independent countries stems from a time when the vast majority of the populations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand consisted of people who really didn't consider the British as foreigners or Britain as a foreign country. In the following decades things have changed and demographics have changed. Large proportions of those countries include people who have no ties to Britain therefore no affinity but also the descendants of those who didn't consider Britain as a foreign country they do consider it as a foreign country. The current arrangement would be unacceptable if there had to be a decision on it today.

There are some people whose death is widely talked about even before they are dead. The Queen was one of them.