The main symbol of the monarchy is the sovereign him or herself, being described as "the personal expression of the Crown in Canada" and the
personification of the Canadian state. Thus, the image of the sovereign acts as an indication of that individual's authority and therefore appears on objects created by order of the
Crown-in-Council, such as coins, postage stamps, and the
Great Seal of Canada. The images of English monarchs were first stuck onto coins 1,000 years ago. Many of the depictions of the sovereign and other members of the
royal family, as well as some of their clothing, are part of the
Crown Collection, a carried compilation of paintings, prints, sculptures,
objets d'art, and furniture.
Coinage, banknotes, and postage Coins were one of the first objects to bear the image of the reigning sovereign in what is today Canada. After 1640, French colonists employed the ''
Louis d'or'' ("gold Louis", which first bore the effigy of King
Louis XIII and then all subsequent French monarchs) until the
transfer of New France to the British in 1763. After, British sovereigns and coppers were used, sometimes long after the end of the reign of the monarch appearing on the coin. Canadian coins featured effigies of the monarch that were consistent with the other
Commonwealth realms until 1990. In that year, the Royal Canadian Mint opted to use an effigy of Elizabeth II designed by
Dora de Pédery-Hunt, making her the first Canadian to sculpt an effigy of the Queen on coinage. Pédery-Hunt's rendition was used until 2003 when a design by
Susanna Blunt took its place. After the
death of Elizabeth II, Blunt's effigy remained in use until 2023, when it was replaced by
Steven Rosati's rendition of
Charles III. Stamps previously issued in other British North American colonies showed images of crowns and, into the late 1800s, bore some variation of the Queen's cypher. Starting in 1939, when she was still Princess Elizabeth of York, Queen Elizabeth II was depicted in 59 successive stamp designs in Canada, continuing on to the
Queen Elizabeth II definitive stamps released in the 2000s.
Artworks The monarchs of Canada have been portrayed by Canadian and European artists in paint, sculpture, and photography. Formal likenesses of the monarch are commissioned by relevant official bodies, such as crowns-in-council or parliaments, and are often found inside or outside government buildings, military installations, many schools, and Canada's high commissions and embassies abroad, as well as in parks and other public places. A full collection of official portraits of sovereigns of Canada and its predecessor territories going back to
King Francis I was amassed by
Senator Serge Joyal and are on display in the
Senate foyer and Salon de la Francophonie in the parliament buildings'
Centre Block. One of these is the portrait of Queen Victoria painted by
John Partridge, which was created in the United Kingdom and shipped to Canada in the early 1840s. It was rescued from four fires, including the
burning of the parliament of the Province of Canada in 1849 and the
great fire that destroyed the Centre Block in 1916. During the latter event, parliamentary staff, desperately trying to save as much artwork as they could, found the portrait of Victoria was too large to fit through the door. They, thus, quickly cut it out of its frame and rolled it up. As a consequence, a cut through the crown can be seen today in the painting, which hangs in the Senate foyer. An official painted portrait of Queen Elizabeth II was created in 1976, and another by
Scarborough, Ontario, artist
Phil Richards was completed in 2012 mark
the monarch's Diamond Jubilee. The latter image depicts Elizabeth wearing her insignia as Sovereign of the
Order of Canada and
Order of Military Merit and standing in
Rideau Hall beside a desk upon which is a copy of the
Constitution Act, 1867 (granted
royal assent by Queen Victoria and
patriated by Queen Elizabeth), and a vase embossed with the Canadian Diamond Jubilee emblem; behind the Queen is the
Canadian national flag and
George Hayter's 1837 state portrait of Victoria. The creation of this portrait is the subject of a
National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary directed by
Hubert Davis, which was released in fall 2012 as part of the NFB's ''Queen's Diamond Jubilee Collector's Edition''. The painting was on 25 June installed in the ballroom at Rideau Hall. outside the
Saskatchewan Legislative Building Elizabeth II was also the subject of Canadian painters, including
Jean Paul Lemieux, whose 1979 work
affectionate memory images combines "the familiar and the constitutional" by portraying the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in a meadow in front of the Canadian parliament buildings. More formal and enduring are the sculptures of some of Canada's monarchs, such as
Louis-Philippe Hébert's bronze statue of Queen Victoria that was in 1901 unveiled on
Parliament Hill in
Ottawa.
Jack Harmon of
British Columbia created in 1992 the
equestrian statue of Queen Elizabeth II that also stands on Parliament Hill, and sculptor
Susan Velder fashioned in June 2003 another such statue for the grounds of the
Saskatchewan Legislative Building. Queen Elizabeth II posed for a number of Canada's prominent photographers, the first being
Yousuf Karsh, who made a formal portrait of Elizabeth when she was a 17-year-old princess and, later, took a series of official pictures of the princess, in formal and informal poses, just months before she acceded to the throne. Karsh was commissioned on two subsequent occasions to create series of pictures of the Queen and
the Duke of Edinburgh, once prior to Elizabeth's 1967 tour of Canada for the
centenary of Canada's confederation, when he photographed the royal couple at
Buckingham Palace, and again in 1984, creating a set of portraits that included a shot of the Queen with her
corgi, Shadow. Prior to her second tour of Canada as queen in 1959, Elizabeth requested that a Canadian photographer take her pre-tour pictures and
Donald McKeague of
Toronto was selected. Then, in 1973,
Onnig Cavoukian, also from Toronto, made a photographic portrait that was dubbed "The Citizen Queen" because of the informal way in which Elizabeth was depicted. Rideau Hall photographer John Evans captured the sovereign on film in 1977, during her
Silver Jubilee stay in Ottawa; Evans portrayed the Queen following her return from
opening parliament. For instance, the gown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at both her coronation in
London and the opening of the Canadian parliament in 1957 was decorated with the floral emblems of her realms, including maple leaves for Canada. During the same 1957 visit to Ottawa, the Queen also wore to a banquet held at Rideau Hall the
Maple-Leaf-of-Canada dress; it was a pale green
satin gown, edged with a garland consisting of deep green
velvet maple leaves appliquéd with crystals and emeralds. Afterwards, the dress was donated to the Crown Collection and is now held at the Canadian Museum of History. Occasionally, she wore clothing designed with
Aboriginal motifs or materials made by some of the First Nations peoples. For the opening of parliament in 1977, the Queen wore a gown with gold fringes that was suggestive of an aboriginal princess and, The monarch also owns various jewellery pieces that are distinctively Canadian, such as two maple leaf
brooches. The Queen subsequently lent it to her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, for her 1951 tour of Canada. The younger Elizabeth inherited the brooch upon becoming queen in 1952 and continued to wear it while in Canada or, for instance, sitting for an official Canadian portrait. The Saskatchewan Tourmaline Brooch was also made by Hillberg and Berk and gifted to the Queen in 2013 by the
Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan,
Vaughn Solomon Schofield. It has an asymmetrical geometric floral design and is made of white gold set with Madagascar
tourmalines, diamonds, and a single freshwater pearl. The government of the
Northwest Territories had the Polar Bear Brooch made for the then-Duchess of Cambridge and matching
cufflinks for
the then-Duke of Cambridge, in 2011. Created by
Harry Winston, the brooch features of pavé-set diamonds in platinum; 302 diamonds in total, all mined at the local Diavik Diamond Mine. The cufflinks consist of 390 diamonds, weighing total. ==Crown==