While the queen’s portrait still hangs in Kingston’s city council chambers, it does not at legion 631 in Kingston, Ont.’s west end.
However, a photo of King Charles III is already up, adorning the legion’s hall.
“I went on the internet just to see what I could find of King Charles and I said that should be ok to put up until we get the official portrait from the government,” said branch president Tom Briggs.
Briggs said he wasn’t going rogue, but that he was following clear instructions that came down from legion command.
“They said if you don’t have a picture of the King that’s decent for a portrait, use the queen’s portrait with a poppy in the bottom left corner and that signifies that she’s passed away,” Briggs said.
However, it was less clear for Miranda Riley, the City of Kingston’s civic collection technician.
“There was no official city protocol that I could find,” she said.
This left Riley with a bit of homework and improvising.
“So, I was kind of scraping together what I could find on the federal cites, what different royal cites were saying and just kind of deduced what would be the best practice and we were looking at what other municipalities were doing as well,” she added.
Essentially it boils down to: wait for King Charles III to officially get his crown before putting his face on the wall.
“Then we’ll get the official portraits and we can swap them out but for now as far as we can tell we’re keeping the queen up,” Riley said.
The conundrum won’t happen again as Riley said they are now drafting an official policy, since it’s been 70 years since the last time anyone had to worry about it.
Of course, the hope is King Charles III has a long and happy reign before the policy is needed again.
“We’re going to have a full, like, start to finish — this is what you do, this is the timelines,” said Riley.
When the official coronation portrait is available, Briggs says they’ll be switching up as well.
“Everybody will get the same portrait,” he said.
The coronation of King Charles III is set for May 6 at Westminster Abbey.