ARTHUR – A long-ago chance to greet royalty as a representative of her city is among the highlights of her life.
Today, she says, her “heart’s desire” is to reconnect with another person who shared the experience with her as a young girl.
Arthur resident Donna Williams, then Donna Baker, was seven years old when Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and her husband, Prince Philip, visited London, Ontario on Oct. 14, 1951.
Although the royal couple was only passing through London as part of a Canada-wide tour, Princess Elizabeth’s first major royal trip and her first visit to North America, a reception was arranged at a local train station.
As part of the festivities, Williams and Linda Campbell, also seven, were selected to present a bouquet of flowers to the princess.
Williams was representing Mount St. Joseph’s Orphanage, a Catholic facility, while Campbell was chosen from what was then called the Protestant Home for Orphans.
A headline in the Oct. 7, 1951 issue of the London Free Press declared the pair “the luckiest little girls in London,” and included photos of both girls, who were being given lessons on how to curtsey by Londoner Mary Jane Kennedy, who had presented a bouquet to King George and Queen Elizabeth during a 1939 visit from those royals.
Williams says her memories of the day include an impression of a huge crowd.
“There were so many people, so many people,” she said, adding she also recalls some other children fainting, although she’s not sure if that was from heat or excitement.
Williams and Campbell were able to get up close with the soon-to-be monarch as they presented the flowers.
“We walked right up and put them right in her arms,” she recalled.
In all the commotion, the girls almost forgot proper protocol, until someone Williams believes was a security officer called out a reminder.
“All he said to us was ‘Curtsey! Curtsey! Curtsey!’” said Williams.
“I guess we were pretty well stunned with what was going on.”
She added, “It was just overwhelming … the flowers were so long and big, it took both of us to carry them.”
Born in Stratford in 1944, Williams said she ended up in the London orphanage sometime after the Second World War ended and remained there until 1953 or 1954.
“That part I do know, because my mother, my birth mother, she came and took me out of there when I was nine and a half, 10, somewhere in there.”
In the intervening years Williams has lived in Ottawa, Orangeville, London again and at her current home in Arthur. She has been married three times and worked in factories, offices and, for a time, ran her own cleaning business.
Now 78, she is retired, but she helps out at Father’s Heart Healing Ministries in Arthur.
As Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her platinum jubilee in 2022, recognizing 70 years since her coronation, Williams wonders what became of the girl who helped her carry flowers to the princess.
“I had never seen her before that day, and I have never seen her since that day,” said Williams. “But I’ve had quite a journey in my life and I would like to know how her life has been, just connect with her. If she’s alive.
“It would be my heart’s desire to know how she is.”
