Ceremonial Matters

William Lyon Mackenzie King was born in southwestern Ontario on December 17, 1874. In 1921, two weeks after his forty-seventh birthday, he became our tenth prime minister, eventually holding the office longer than any other. But King was not formally made a Canadian citizen until much later, on January 1, 1947. “I signed a letter acknowledging one from Mr. St. Laurent,” he wrote in his diary that evening, “telling me that the Dept. were sending me the first passport of the new series which makes me No. 1 citizen of Canada. How extraordinary this is! Not to be understood except in what has come down to me from the past.”

Several months earlier, the Liberal government had passed the Canadian Citizenship Act. Before it took effect, King was considered a British subject, as were others who had been born here or had become naturalized immigrants. Some saw the new legislation as a mere...