The Queen was and is a big thing in the part of Canada I grew up in. People descended from United Empire Loyalists sometimes write 'U.E.L.' after their names, y

The Queen was and is a big thing in the part of Canada I grew up in. People descended from United Empire Loyalists sometimes write 'U.E.L.' after their names, you see a lot of Queen Elizabeth memorabilia in shops, tourists go on 'loyalist tours', and the biggest bit of pomp and circumstance from my childhood was when the Queen's local representative, the lieutenant-governor of Ontario, visited town. I wasn't particularly impressed and made the mistake of sarcastically saying 'wow, what an honor' when one of the local farmboys was going on about the handshake he'd received from 'the Queen's representative'. He backhanded me hard enough to knock my glasses thirty feet. Canada, like the United States, is a little too large and varied to easily generalize about.