By Lloyd Mackey

QUEEN Elizabeth II – among other things, Canada's monarch – was in Ottawa this past week.

Edna and I had some opportunities to track her a bit. One of those chances came July 1, when we lined up on the sidewalk across the street from the United States Embassy to await the arrival of her landau.

In the photo that I took as she passed our waiting point, you can see the glass face of of the embassy and the RCMP mounted honour guard riding behind the carriage. Prince Phillip, wearing a tan hat, is beside her.

There was a bit of symbolism in choosing that site. It was just a short few feet away that, a little over 10 years ago, I stood watching then-US president Bill Clinton dedicate the newly constructed American embassy.

The symbolism of the two occasions seemed worth mentioning, given that, a few days later, the Queen visited New York to address the United Nations. Some journalists made the point that, on that day, she was visiting a country whose citizens were not "subjects" to Her Majesty. As the queen of the British Commonwealth, she does have close to two billion such subjects. But the United States, while maintaining cordial relations with Great Britain and the Commonwealth for most of its 234-year history, has not been a part of that "tribe" since its Declaration of Independence in 1776.

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One of the results of the successful Write! Canada Christian writers' conference held mid-June in Guelph, was the opportunity for attenders, including yours truly, to chat with Charles Lewis, the religion writer for the National Post.

Lewis heard about the conference and paid it a visit, with a view to finding writers and commenters for Holy Post, the newspaper's faith-based blog.

Since then, Robert White, the editor of ChristianWeek Ontario, and Patricia Paddey, producer for Lorna Dueck's Listen Up!, have had pieces appear on Holy Post. I understand that an item I wrote might make the cut, as well. It deals with Iain Duncan Smith and his Centre for Social Justice, which might be one of the reasons there is now a centre-right coalition in Great Britain, with a built-in appreciation for faith-based perspectives. In my piece, I make some suggestions that Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff might take into account, in preparation for the possibility of another minority government, after the next election.

The National Post can be found at www.nationalpost.com. Holy Post can be found on the site under "blogs."

Rather than either ignoring or hyperbolizing the faith-political interface, as many news gatherers are prone to do, Holy Post plays it straight. It is a good place for Christian believers to engage in some constructive discussion with others of a different stripe.

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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006), More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005) and Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning (ECW Press, 1997). Lloyd can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

July 8/2010