Meghan Markle takes seaplane to Vancouver, visits Downtown Eastside Women's Centre
Credit to Author: Harrison Mooney| Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2020 03:27:26 +0000
Vancouver Island has lost that Markle sparkle — the Duchess of Sussex left Victoria on Tuesday, flying to Vancouver for a visit that included the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.
The notion that Markle was planning to disappear into one of B.C.’s island communities was always a bit laughable to me, especially as a fellow black person. Once while hitchhiking on Galiano during a weekend visit, I was picked up by a local who had already heard through the grapevine that I was on the island.
It’s a lot easier to go unnoticed in Vancouver.
Perhaps The Duchess agrees. It might explain why the wife of Prince Harry (whose public defection from the royal family last week dominated the news even as the world was on the brink of World War III) has boarded a seaplane for the mainland.
Markle was spotted Tuesday for the first time this week at Victoria Harbour Airport, where she took a Whistler Air flight bound for Vancouver, according to U.K. tabloid The Daily Mail.
Why, that’s where we live!
It would be an honour to host a member of the British monarchy, but it’s even more of an honour to host the woman who thumbed her nose at it and absconded with the best prince like a Hallmark Channel movie come to life. Expect the film version of this story by next Christmas.
As this report comes from a British tabloid, there is plenty of talk about what Markle was wearing: a trendy, fur-lined Barbour parka, which will do little to dispel the notion that Canada is a cold and barren wasteland, as the New York Times suggested last week in a heavily ridiculed tweet.
Cover from the British tabloid The Sun on Jan. 9, 2020, featuring Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Vancouverites, who live in the small portion of Canada classified as a temperate coastal rainforest rather than a frozen heckhole, mocked the item mercilessly. But then an arctic airmass rolled in, dropping buckets of snow all over the place and only cementing the stereotype. Now we all look like chilly-willies who dig tunnels in the snow to get to school.
Is Markle headed to Vancouver to stay? She is one of very few young people who can probably afford to buy property here, even without the sovereign grant. Plus there’s a thriving film industry here, Hollywood North, which shares a time zone with Hollywood South. And it certainly makes more sense than anywhere on the East Coast, especially if she plans to keep her distance from the British monarchy, who are famed for their Atlantic coastal abductions.
Markle arrived in Vancouver Tuesday afternoon and visited the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre almost straight away.
The Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle visited the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre in Vancouver on Jan. 14, 2020. [PNG Merlin Archive]
When Markle lived in Toronto between 2011 and 2017 – while filming Suits – she volunteered at the St. Felix Centre that offers shelter and a food-program.
The Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle visited the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre in Vancouver on Jan. 14, 2020. [PNG Merlin Archive]
According to the St. Felix Centre Instagram account, Markle was an active volunteer in the kitchen and one Thanksgiving provided a meal for 100 people.
Should Vancouverites get used to seeing Markle around town more often? Only time, and the British tabloids chasing the duchess all over the coast, will tell.
with files from David Carrigg
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