OTTAWA, Ont. — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s in disbelief over the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
“As her twelfth Canadian prime minister, I'm having trouble believing that my last sitdown with her was my last,” Trudeau told reporters in Vancouver.
Trudeau, who has known the monarch since he was a boy, lauded the queen’s thoughtfulness, curiosity and humor.
“She was one of my favorite people in the world,” Trudeau said. “And I will miss her so.”
The queen died Thursday at Balmoral, the Scottish estate where she has spent her summer. She was 96.
“For most Canadians, we have known no other Sovereign. Queen Elizabeth II was a constant presence in our lives,” Trudeau said in a statement shortly after the news of the death rippled around the world.
The queen worked up until Tuesday when she met with Liz Truss and invited the new U.K. Prime Minister to form the next government. Truss was the last prime minister, the sovereign’s fifteenth, the queen appointed during her historic 70-year reign.
Trudeau’s last meeting with the queen was this spring at Windsor Castle. It was her first in-person audience since returning to duties after testing positive for Covid-19 in February.
The Canadian prime minister told reporters after that early March meeting that the Queen had questions about Canada. They talked about global events, a discussion that was “useful for me, anyway,” he quipped.
“I can tell you that in my conversation with her this morning she was as insightful and perspicacious as ever,” Trudeau said at the time.
The prime minister and the queen have a long history, making him unique among world leaders. His extraordinary childhood featured the occasional lunch with the monarch.
And when the queen greeted Trudeau as Canada’s new prime minister at a 2015 Commonwealth leaders' summit dinner, she jokingly thanked him for making her feel old.
The pair first crossed paths in May 1977 when Trudeau was brought to London by his father, the late former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, to attend a G-7 meeting.
It was on that trip when Trudeau senior, dressed in black tie, performed a playful pirouette while walking a few short paces behind the queen on their way into a formal dinner in Buckingham Palace.
A Canadian pool photographer captured the sensational moment, catching Trudeau’s twirl in one of the Palace’s gilded rooms with the queen, the embodiment of tradition, in the same frame.
