For the better part of forty years, official Canada has treated the crown with pointed neglect, if not overt disdain, an attitude the journalist Peter Brimelow has memorably compared to that of "the urchin secretly urinating on some shrub in the hope that it will die." The crown insignia and "royal" designation have been stripped from virtually every national institution, save the RCMP. The media routinely describe supporters of constitutional monarchy -- that is, of the system of government now in effect -- in terms usually reserved for survivors of alien abductions.

The present Prime Minister plainly considers the crown as a sort of appendix, not much use but not worth the pain of taking out.

Asked his views on the subject during a visit to Australia, where the future of the monarchy is a matter of intense debate, Chretien could not actually rouse himself to a defence of the sovereign in whose name he governs, replying only that he already had enough headaches with the separatists.

Yet the public, infuriatingly, refuses to share in the sniggering contempt of its betters. The crowds lining the streets to cheer the Queen this royal visit evidently do not think of the crown as a quaint anachronism or colonial relic.

To them, she is ours. In the words of an Innu chief, she is "everybody's Queen," a living symbol of unity -- a unity grounded not in some fictitious national identity, nor in the fragile compacts of statesmen, but in a common allegiance. "A society of allegiance," as the historian W. L. Morton wrote, requires no conformity to a single way of life, but admits "a thousand diversities." Perhaps the public understands better than the elites the significance of owing loyalty to a person, rather than so abstract and bloodless a thing as "the state." Think of it: the whole vast, unblinking apparatus of the modern state, a paper mill of laws and taxes and bureaucratic edicts, and at the top of it sits ... a family. A very real family, what is more, with its share of errant brothers and quarreling in-laws -- not quite just like any other, perhaps, but close enough.

With such vulnerability comes a kind of dignity, such as the Queen has displayed, and when she walks among us -- grave and dutiful and hard at work -- it quickens the sense of allegiance. The Queen is indeed the personification of the state. As such, she is an emblem not only of unity, but of humanism, the notion that government is ultimately not about ideas or abstractions, but about people. Yet as a constitutional monarch, she stands for a government of laws, not of men: as she herself is subject to the rule of law, so are we.

In her limited role, so far removed from the absolute monarchs of old, she reminds us of the hard-won victory of democracy; of continuity, and yet of change. At the same time, the presence of so undemocratic an institution at the heart of our system of government offers an ironic counterpoint to the pretensions of our elected representatives. We may choose a government, but the crown embodies our right to choose.

When the Prime Minister, it is said, bows to the Queen, he bows to us. And of course, he bows with us. The Crown is in this sense a levelling instrument: we are all equal as subjects of the Queen.

If it is easier to feel loyalty to a person than a concept, likewise only a person can reciprocate it: our loyalty the Queen repays with duty. This is, finally, what makes the hereditary aspect of monarchy so essential. It isn't just that the Queen did not seek the office. She had no choice. Who wears the crown demands no answers of the life she was born to, but accepts it in all its mysteries -- as one day, on her death, her successor must as well. Not everything is given to us to understand in this world, but the generations pass, and life goes on. That seems a weightier message than any party platform can deliver.

Loyalty. Unity. The sovereignty of the people.

Equality before the law.

These, too, are part of the motto of the crown, inscribed in codes so subtle that only the people can decipher them.