My dear Monarchist,
Thank you for your most welcome email and kind words.
The issue you raise has required formal consideration for some time. Unfortunately, as LB Pearson was the last Canadian to hold the OM and the powers-that-be at RH no doubt thought it unlikely that another Canadian would be appointed, the OM was not included in the modern/revised Order of Precedence. I suspect, however, that the official position of the Government would be that, post 1972, the CC outranks the OM.
Such a position, if it is ever formally expressed, will have been based upon wholly political and pseudo-nationalist considerations and would be as unconvincing and nonsensical as the decision to group all the grades of the Order of Canada together, ranking a lowly Member of the Order of Canada above Companions of the Order of Military Merit, the Order of Merit of the Police Forces and of the Royal Victorian Order.
It is my view that the OM, as an exclusive award in the personal gift of Her Majesty, clearly outranks the far less exclusive CC. The Government's agenda notwithstanding, I do not see how one can arrive at any other conclusion. The New Zealand Royal Honours System (which, after that of the UK, is the most finely crafted honours system in the Commonwealth) has ranked the OM correctly.
Kind regards,
Rafal (Rafe) Heydel-Mankoo
Editor
Burke's Peerage & Gentry:
World Orders of Knighthood and Merit
http://www.wokm.co.uk/
Pardon me for being clueless but I was wondering what happened to Rafal. Editor of Burke's, very nice. I very much miss his blog.
ReplyDeleteI told him as much. We all miss the Young Fogey.
ReplyDeleteHe's actually been editor of Burke's for some time now, a few years at least. If you look at his Wikipedia entry, he currently works for Deutsche Bank in London.
Perhaps he simply doesn't have the time to blog anymore (investment bankers do work long hours, believe me I know), but he was kind enough to give me his authoritative position on the matter above, which is in line with that of Christopher McCreery, the other scholarly authority on the question of Canadian honours.