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Old 12-17-2010, 04:14 PM
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natehale1971 natehale1971 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by helbent4 View Post
Nate,

I don't particularly see the political logic or linguistic/historical rationale. The "Commonwealth" is something Canada would be a part of, it's not usually considered a term for a state in and of itself, albeit rarely. (Except for some American states, even less reason to call ourselves a Commonwealth.)

Canada, as a confederation, already contains the nation of Quebec, so there was no reason to change from a Dominion to anything else merely to signify a return to the historical status quo. I can easily see Canada remaining a confederation of provinces and territories.

If the British-led Commonwealth is somehow strengthened in the postwar world (and I don't really have a problem with this) then the members of the commonwealth that are constitutional monarchies will already generally be referred to as Dominions. Renaming Canada a Commonwealth merely seems redundant if not linguistically clumsy. Right now, the Dominion of Canada is a confederation that is part of the Commonwealth, instead of being a commonwealth that is part of the Commonwealth.

Besides, electing a Governor General from a list of choices given by the Crown hardly seems like a true republic in any sense of the word! For that matter, it means even less political control for Canadians, as currently Canada specifically tells the Crown who to pick, not the other way around. If the Crown were to start exercising political control over Canada then it makes even more sense to call Canada a Dominion.

The USA has gone through serious political changes since its founding as a republic, but ya'all haven't changed what you call yourselves because historical and cultural continuity is important. Such things would be even more important, I believe, after the Twilight War.

But hey, if you just personally like the name "Commonwealth", then there it is. I just like our name as it is, so I can't hold that against you all that much!

Tony
I totally understand all of what you're saying... But the 'recent' development of the Crown becoming so powerful with the Commonwealth nations.. that came about after the crown re assumed control of the British Isles and the new way the monarchy was established (ie High King/Queen of the United Kingdom, and the individual Kings/Queens of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland).

Basically, Canada had to bring Quebec back into the fold on their won... And the ultra-nationalist French Quebec leader had French support (and thus had French military forces on their side when Quebec marched east to 'punish' the English Canadians for all the slights that he felt they had lumped upon French Canadians). The ultra-nationalist leader was killed by his own people (the was just like Hitler, and some of his military leaders saw him as horrible monster, but they actually succeeded in killing the bastard), and since they had such a strong hand when they started the talks to come back into the Confederation, they had issues with the name 'Dominion' since it made them sub-servant to a 'far away monarchy'.

And thus the name change to "The Commonwealth of Canada"

But i guess i really miss described the election of the Governor-General. The voters are the one who picks the candidates that the Crown chooses from. And the tradition is that the person who has the most votes is the one that the Monarch appoints as the new Governor-General. The only time this was not the case, was when a Monarch appointed his youngest (of six) sibling as Governor-General... while this controversial decision caused problems at first, said Royal ended up being one of the most loved of 'modern' Governor-Generals. So much so their family became the official Royal family of Canada. And to top that, the great-grand child of said Governor-General would be the first royal outside of the British Isles to elected to the Throne of High King!
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