Museum’s British Royal Wedding Tea will be a civilized

(States Twitter)-Museum is welcoming all to an April 30 British tea, featuring scones with clotted cream, Murchie’s tea, Batenburg cake imported from England as well as a variety of baking from volunteers.

To commemorate the event, the museum has put together a new display featuring artifacts and memorabilia commemorating past Royal visits to Revelstoke. In addition to several large paintings of queens, kings, princes and princesses, there are also photos of royal visits to Revelstoke.

Royalty have visited Revelstoke on many occasions over the years, especially during the time when the railway was the preferred method of transcontinental travel.

Here’s a summary of some of the past Royal visits, most of it compiled directly from text provided by the Revelstoke Museum & Archives:

The Prince of Wales returned with his brother Prince George, the Duke of York, in 1927, when the Prince officially opened the mountain highway that is now known as Meadows in the Sky Parkway in Mount Revelstoke National Park. A special dais with the Prince’s insignia was created for the occasion.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth toured Canada in the Royal Tour of 1939, in what has been termed the most important Royal visit in history. The citizens of the commonwealth were concerned about the rumours of oncoming war with Germany and were greatly comforted and reassured by the visit of the Royal couple. Over 9,000 people gathered in the pouring rain at the Revelstoke CPR station on May 28, 1939, to catch a glimpse of the King and Queen. This was well more than double the population of Revelstoke at the time. The Queen was quite distressed when she heard that children and elderly people had been waiting for hours in the rain.

Only twice in the last 50 years has snow covered the ground prior to October 25th, the first in 1926. The second time was last Friday, when four inches of snow covered the ground.” This was the first line of the Revelstoke Review’s article after the Oct. 25, 1951, visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. Snow was still falling when Mayor Walter Hardman welcomed the Princess at the CPR station.

Elizabeth and Philip again visited Revelstoke in 1959 as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The Revelstoke Museum & Archives doesn’t have any photos of that visit. If you have any, they’d love a copy for the museum.