CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas called Canada's Women and girls the bravest in the world back in our days of 60s, 70s and 80s- and we raised our sons 2 treat women and children better- Please don't let us down- March 8- International Women's Day is everyday- no more excuses students- no more excuses- Loretta Saunders 4 u/Rita MacNeil Warrior Woman/BLOGS /DAILY UPDATES /SEP 22, 2014 - JUSTICE 4 REHTAEH PARSONS- one of abusers pleads guilty- One Billion rising
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/03/canada-military-news-gloria-steinem-and.html
Princess Diana and Mother Teresa- u were both gladiators of women warriors- January 2015- still miss u terribly/ The world learned 2 grieve 2gether loving u so- u inspired billions and we wept openly...and often... Peace of Christ.... miss u still- u raised us up as humanity and gave us dreams and goals
Almost a billion of us around the world- moms, girls, grandmas, aunties - we promised we'd watch out 4 Wills and Harry... and by God we did.... we did.... we love u Princess Di... and always Mother Teresa...
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IN CANADA
The Princess and the Pauper
Different in life and in death
Prince of Wales Collegiate
St. John's, Newfoundland
By Matthew J.
Different in life and in death
Prince of Wales Collegiate
St. John's, Newfoundland
By Matthew J.
Two
modern-day icons died over the course of the past month. The first was Princess
Diana who captured the world's heart with her beauty, charm, and enthusiasm.
She was the victim of a car crash in Paris a few weeks ago. The other was
Mother Teresa, who devoted her entire life to helping the poor. Had these two
deaths occurred in different years, either would surely have been the dominant
news item of that particular year; however, the fact that both occurred in the
same year has caused complications, inevitable comparisons, and a dilemma for
the public and the media.
Both of
these deaths were indeed tragic, but for different reasons. Diana died at a very
young age, leaving behind two young sons, and her death was not at all
expected. Television stations all over the world aired coverage from Paris and
London on the night of her death, and they continued their in-depth coverage
throughout the rest of the week. The response from the public was that of shock
and sadness; however, there were still some who claimed that Diana's death bore
no more importance than the death of any other person in society. What these
people fail to realize is that Diana was an important figure to many people all
over the world who admired her. While she was not a saint, she used her
position to her advantage and helped out those in need wherever possible. She
became the people's princess and her death was therefore a monumental event in
modern history.
Since
Diana's death began a long series of commentaries, she became somewhat of a
saint in her death, similar to Eva Peron. As a result, Mother Teresa's death
later received less attention than it would normally have received. Mother
Teresa was already an established saint, and her death did not come
unexpectedly. However, there are still some who feel that her death deserved
more attention than it received. Why did her death not receive more coverage?
Was it because people cared more about Diana than about Mother Teresa? Was it
because of the media's lifelong obsession with Diana? Was it simply a bad call
by the media?
The latter
seems to be the most popular opinion, mostly because it is the easiest answer
to give. On the day that Mother Teresa died, newspapers and television stations
struggled to make the right decision in relation to how the two deaths should
be handled. "There were two problems that day," says The Evening
Telegram's John Gushue. "First of all, that was the same day that the
Queen gave her televised speech ... and, secondly, the whole issue of Diana's
funeral was still up in the air." This particular newspaper decided to
publish a picture of Mother Teresa holding a baby instead of a picture of both
women. "Looking back," says Evening Telegram managing editor Bretton
Loney, "I thank my lucky stars that we made that decision, because it came
across really well."
Did The
Evening Telegram make the right decision? There is no clear answer. The deaths
of both women surely deserved front page coverage in every newspaper but the
media and the public's fascination with Princess Diana caused many conflicts of
interest all over the world. On one hand, Diana deserved the coverage that she
received but, on the other, Mother Teresa deserved a lot more than she
received. Is this the fault of the media?
The honest
answer is no. The media was put in a very tight spot when these two deaths
occurred. Newspapers and television stations were so wrapped up in their
coverage of Diana that Mother Teresa's death was probably seen as "just
another news item" when, at any other time, it would have been the story
of the year. This is an unfortunate occurrence but not one that can be blamed
squarely on the media. While the entire world mourns the loss of Mother Teresa,
it must be said that Diana's death drew the public in because of its uniqueness
and because of the special relationship that she had with her public.
These two
women should not be compared after their deaths. They were two different people
who both made the world a better place than it was when they arrived here, and
both deserve much praise. While it was certainly Mother Teresa who gave the
most time and attention to her cause, Diana should be admired for going way
beyond the call of duty. She used her position as a lady of royalty to support
various charities and brighten up the lives of those in need by visiting them
and supporting them. As Elton John sings, both women were merely candles in a
world full of wind and rain, but their spirits will live on for many years to
come.
-----------
Princess
Diana, Mother Teresa, and the Value of Women's Work
Abstract: Media representations of
Princess Diana and Mother Teresa following their deaths extolled their good
works and selfless devotion to others. This essay explores these
representations using Luce Irigaray's analysis of women's unpaid domestic labor
and charity. It argues that there is a connection between the unpaid status of
so much of women's work and the current imagery surrounding Princess Diana and
Mother Teresa celebrating the capacity of women to perform acts of charity and
work for free.
It is thought to be normal, moral, a sign of good policy, for a woman to receive no payment, or low payment, to be asked to do charity work.
– Irigaray 1993b, 82
It is thought to be normal, moral, a sign of good policy, for a woman to receive no payment, or low payment, to be asked to do charity work.
– Irigaray 1993b, 82
The
one-year anniversary of the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa has come
and gone, yet public interest and media attention has scarcely flagged. They
remain two of the highest-profile women of the decade and have become cherished
cultural icons of an ideal and idealized vision of the virtuous woman. This is despite
the many striking differences between the young and glamorous Princess of
Wales, who married into one of the largest private fortunes in the world and
was killed in a high speed car chase through the streets of Paris, and Mother
Teresa, a Catholic nun and founder of the Sisters of Charity who spent her long
life working among the poorest of the world's poor, lived vows of celibacy and
poverty, and died quietly in her Mission in Calcutta at the age of 87. 1 These
two very different women, who lived spectacularly different lives, share a
common fate as emblems of feminine virtue for millions around the world. But
why this unlikely pairing? What, beyond the mere fact that they died within
days of each other, accounts for the shared appeal of a nun and a princess?
In her
essay, "Women, the Sacred, Money," Luce Irigaray examines the role
women play in economies based on sacrifice. She is concerned with the cultural
meanings assumed by acts of sacrifice and with the ways in which women, both
literally and figuratively, participate in these acts. In particular, Irigaray
addresses the role of charity work "in regard to the function of women in
a sacrificial society such as our own" and considers how such work is
incorporated into both the cultural economy of religion as well as the secular,
material economy (1993b, 75). She then examines the range of caring labor that
women so often perform, such as the care and feeding of children, and notes the
ways in which this work lies along a [End Page 146] continuum with other
charitable work, all of which is either unpaid or underpaid and all of which
requires women to make sacrifices for others. These connections, between the
unpaid, charitable work that women are expected to perform, the sacrifices this
entails, and the status, or lack thereof, accorded to women in our society, may
help illuminate the reasons behind the massive cultural attachment to Princess
Diana and Mother Teresa in the wake of their deaths.
Princess
Diana and Mother Teresa were both famous for their public, and highly visible,
good works. Mother Teresa devoted her life to aiding lepers, the sick, and the
needy in Calcutta and around the world. Princess Diana lent her time and her
fame to dozens of charitable causes ranging from those benefitting the victims
of AIDS to the victims of land mines. The work these women did was good,
important, and worthy of public attention and support but, as is so often the
case, their popularity is overdetermined by the underlying causes. There are
many who labor at charitable work, yet remain virtually anonymous. To
understand the popularity of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, additional
cultural resonances must be explored.
Beyond the
fact of the shared good works performed by the two women lies another shared
fact that is all but obscured by their contrasting social stations. Both women
performed their work for free. The help they rendered was of enormous value,
yet it was given freely. This is the meaning of charity. Yet it may be that it
is not simply the good, hard, and valuable work Princess Diana and Mother
Teresa performed for others that led to their wide-spread appeal, but that they
asked nothing for themselves in return for this work that is of most
importance. In short, their willingness to sacrifice their time and energy for
others and that they did so expecting nothing in return may be more significant
than any tangible results their efforts achieved. Coupled with the fact that it
was done by women, this willingness to work for free and to devote oneself to
the needs of others sends a powerful message that a woman's value may be in
direct proportion to the sacrifices she makes.
The
reasons enabling Princess Diana and Mother Teresa to work for free were very
different. Mother Teresa, by virtue of being a nun and embracing a life of
personal poverty, accepted no payment for her services, relying on the Church
for her support. Her renunciation of material wealth made possible her
charitable works. For Princess Diana, just the opposite was true. It was
because she was one of the wealthiest women on earth that she was able to work
for free. Her financial independence as the Princess of Wales made it possible
for her to participate in charitable work as a full-time job. In the one case,
the absence of wealth and, in the other, its excess was largely responsible for
allowing each to devote her time to such causes.
It is the
similarity between this selfless, charitable work and the domestic [End Page
147] caring labor performed by the vast majority of women around the world
that lends images of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa their cultural weight.
Both types of work are unwaged, and both constitute a sacrifice. Irigaray
writes: "When we ask a woman to work for nothing, when we, as women,
refuse to accept or seek society's remuneration for our work, that constitutes
a repression" (1993b, 81). It is a repression of the value accorded to
women as women. It is a repression of the cultural and material resources put
at the disposal of women to be used for their own purposes and goals. For
Irigaray, a mark of the ubiquity of this repression can be found in the fact
that it is seen as so unexceptional, and even expected, that women should not
be paid for their work, especially work aimed at taking care of the needs of
others. Even more than this, it becomes a sign of virtue on the part of the
woman to serve others without pay. Self-sacrifice comes to be a crucial part of
what it means to be a good woman. For instance, Irigaray writes: "It is
clear that our societies assume that the mother should feed her child for free,
before and after birth, and that she should remain the nurse of man and of
society" (1993b, 83). This willingness to work for free appears at the
core of the role most closely associated with "woman" in our society,
that of mother. The idea of a mother who would demand payment for feeding her
child is deeply shocking to our cultural sensibilities. However, why should
such clearly valuable and necessary work not be compensated? It is here that
the full radical potential of a campaign such as International Wages for
Housework can be glimpsed. Far from simply working to reinscribe women within
the confines of a restrictive domestic economy, the demand for wages for
housework may instead strike at the heart of women's oppression by undermining
the founding fiction that a woman's worth is based on her willingness to
sacrifice herself and to work for free.
There is
certainly a history of at least some women receiving some pay for performing
some aspects of the caring labor associated with motherhood. This ranges from
the disappearing vocation of wet nurse to the emerging, high-tech job of
surrogate mother along with a host of more common occupations such as cook,
housekeeper, therapist, and prostitute (Wood 1997, 51). However, it is
significant that even women who engage in these occupations professionally
receive no pay when they perform these tasks in their own homes, for their own
families. Mothers always work for free. In the case of Princess Diana and
Mother Teresa, what distinguishes them is their willingness to perform some of
these same tasks of caring labor for people outside of their immediate families
and to render these services for free, that is, as if they were mothers. After
all, Teresa, a celibate and childless woman who voluntarily takes on the task
of caring for the needy without pay, is awarded the honorific title of
"Mother." Here the link between motherhood and all the unpaid caring
labor performed by women is made explicit. [End Page 148]
Continuing
her discussion of the unpaid work of motherhood, Irigaray writes:
Who,
without irony or unconsciousness, can claim that work and working conditions
are justly compensated in the face of the derisory sum a woman can earn for
bearing and bringing a child into the world? If this payment did not attest to
the tragic distress of many women, it would be the funniest response that could
be made in objection to the fair pay issue. Equal pay for equal work? What
work? (1993b, n. 5, 84)
So much of
"women's work" fails even to count as work that issues of comparable
worth cannot be meaningfully raised. What does it mean to demand equal pay for
the work of childbirth, a job still performed solely by women? Does it make
sense to demand pay equal to that received by men for the same work? Elsewhere,
Irigaray poses the question of women's equality as equality with whom?
"The demand to be equal presupposes a point of comparison. To whom or to
what do women want to be equalized? To men? To a salary? To a public office? To
what standard? Why not to themselves?" (1993a, 12). In the case of
childbirth, the demand for equal pay is not possible because what is at stake
is the acknowledgment of a work specific to women. There is no male standard by
which to measure its value. It is the lack of acknowledgment of women's work as
work that stands in the way of it being valued, and this is true of all the
caretaking and nurturing work women perform and not just that associated with
childbirth and childcare.
By and
large, the work of meeting the needs of those in crisis falls upon women. It is
work that is most often unpaid and with which women must cope using only the
resources at hand, resources that are very often insufficient even to meet
their own needs. In this context, the labor of caring can only be accomplished
through the means of sacrifice. Again, Irigaray writes: "Any women who are
content to let other women feed their children on charity and bear children for
nothing are (whether voluntarily or not) full participants in a system of
values that prizes sacrifice above all" (1993b, 85). Here Irigaray calls
attention to the situation where care for oneself and care for others becomes a
zero-sum game. Given such a bind, the only options available are ones where aid
to others comes at the expense of oneself, where even food for one's children
can only be had at the expense of food for oneself. In such a system, care can
only be expressed as sacrifice.
It is this
system valuing the sacrifices of women that currently celebrates the lives of
Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. The images of these women saturating the
media are images of compassion and care, of women whose lives were devoted to
giving aid and comfort to those suffering. These are stirring and powerful
images that, rightly, move and inspire us. It is not necessary to see either
Princess Diana or Mother [End Page 149] Teresa as victims in Irigaray's
terms. Their lives and their life-choices uniquely suited them to their chosen
tasks of providing public services of care and compassion. Mother Teresa
through her vows as a nun and Princess Diana through her role as Princess of
Wales, and both through their immense personal strength and stamina, chose
lives that were not diminished by these duties and demands, but enhanced.
However, at the same time as media images praise the accomplishments of two
extraordinary women, an equally powerful, if more subtle, message is also
conveyed, and that message is that it is good for women to work for free and to
sacrifice themselves for others. This message resonates with so much in our
culture that its truth seems almost self-evident, and implicit in the message
is the view that all women should strive to act in this way, not just nuns and
princesses.
It should
be noted in closing that the tremendous outpouring of public adulation and
support for these two was only occasioned by their deaths. It was this
overwhelming display of grief that was the final tribute paid by billions
around the world to these women. What more graphic testimony to the cultural
importance of the sacrifices of women could be imagined than this vast sea of
mourning following the final sacrifice enacted by the deaths of Princess Diana
and Mother Teresa? What action could more deeply and more permanently mark the
value of sacrifice than a willingness to die for others? That this is not what
actually happened in no way detracts from the emotional power of such a
scenario. Two women, famed for their giving and charity, died. How else can
this be understood as anything other than a final act of giving? With an event
as fraught with cultural meanings as this, it is unsurprising that the
resulting images and representations cannot be consumed uncritically. There are
no doubt many progressive possibilities enabled by the fame and popularity of
Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. However, the strand of their fame that
reinforces the notion that women ought to work for free and be valued for the
sacrifices they make for others is one that should be actively resisted.
Note
1.
Biographical information comes from books by Sancton and MacLeod (1998) and by
Spink (1997).
References
Irigaray,
Luce. 1993a. Je, Tu, Nous: Toward a Culture of Difference. Trans. Alison
Martin. New York: Routledge.
Irigaray,
Luce. 1993b. Sexes and Genealogies. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Sancton,
Thomas, and Scott MacLeod. 1998. Death of a Princess. New York: St.
Martin's Press.
Spink,
Kathryn. 1997. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. New York:
Harper Collins.
Wood,
Cynthia A. 1997. "The First World/Third Party Criterion: A Feminist
Critique of Production Boundaries in Economics." Feminist Economics,
3(3):
47-68.
47-68.
--------------
Diana, Princess of Wales
&
Mother Teresa
By
Carter B. Horsley
The
death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car accident in a tunnel along the
Seine in Paris as she and her paramour, Emad Mohamed al-Fayed, were pursued by
a troupe of paparazzi, elicited the most public global mourning for an
individual since the death of President John F. Kennedy about a third of
century before.
Her
death certainly was tragic as she had matured from being merely a lovely
princess into a serious and important humanitarian who was making the most of
an overly scrutinized life, a fairy-tale life that dazzled and taunted the
dreams of men and women alike, young and old, rich and poor.
Her
achievements - a commitment to reach out and literally touch those who suffer,
whether from AIDS, leprosy, or the devastation of landmines - were palpably
honorable, real and influential.
Although
she neither saved nor created an empire, or freed slaves, or the oppressed, or
solved any of the great mysteries of life, she represented grace and nobility,
the latter in its best, non-hereditary meaning.
While
some details and episodes in her truncated and at times tormented life were not
quintessentially perfect, her legacy will be one of personal concern for not
only her family, but for other people. Her leadership in that regard is likely
to prove more lasting than her foibles, or her legendary beauty.
Her
death, and that of her friend, rekindled public debates about celebrity and
privacy.
Such
debates, however, are relatively petty.
Much
of the major media coverage of the death of the Princess of Wales was adequate,
although it tended to overemphasize the importance of paparazzi, loutish scum
who are merely executioners for the business people who own and profit from the
tabloids they serve. In a capitalist world, of course, there is little
difference between such publishing entrepreneurs and the average business
person: morality, for many of them, has no place on the shelf of profit.
The
real villains are not the overtly trashy tabloids and their hirelings, but the
high-priced whores of established media who pompously lent alleged
"stature" to news by foistering the notion that celebrity is a great,
if not the highest value, in American life. Such celebrity newspersons and
"talkers" and their "entertainment" television news magazine
cohorts make a mockery of serious journalism with their gushing, fawning
pandering to "fab" personalities and their callous disregard of
serious news standards.
There
is nothing wrong with entertainment and nothing wrong with interest in
celebrities, but the major media, both visual and print, have higher
responsibilities and those standards have been falling steadily.
Network
executives who not only pander, but order trash have created the
sensationalistic, tabloid fever that dominates much of what passes for culture
at the end of the 20th Century. It is a repugnant, vapid, degrading culture.
Part
of the problem is that many media tycoons, executives and pundits put the blame
on the public and maintain that they are only providing the public with what it
wants.
That
is precisely the crux of the problem. It is the media's responsibility to give
the public not necessarily what it wants but what experienced, incisive, and
"objective" journalism understands to be important. The press, of
course, is not infallible, but its standards cannot be treated as a routine,
bottom-line accounting dictate. The press has, or should have, higher standards
than business.
Good
journalism still exists, of course, but it is increasingly rare.
Hopefully,
Diana's tragedy will send shivers up the spines of the major media which must
always remember that a free press must also be a responsible press.
Censorship
is unthinkable.
Even
some of the nastiest tabloids have broken some important news stories.
Good
decorum and good news can be boring, and quality does not always win out, but
when it does it is nice.
The
United States is too pre-occupied with sporting events, stock prices, gambling,
and in recent years ever-more violent, more fantastic escapism and not enough
with substantive issues of human relations, the environment and the wonders of
life.
It
is not a unique American phenomenon.
Journalism
serves many purposes, not the least of which is curiosity. Are we being told
the truth? Do we know the truth? Can we recognize the truth? What does it mean?
One
can easily ask countless "important" questions, but too often they
are not being asked and instead we are inundated by irrelevancies, or anecdotal
episodes, or non sequiturs, or just plain vicarious silliness.
We
are preoccupied with being humored, not challenged, coddled, not nurtured.
We
are the enemy when we patronize the sleazy, the opportunistic, the inane, when
we inure ourselves to social involvement, civic responsibilities and plain ole
decency.
Individuals
do make a difference and emotions are important and shared emotions are
significant, but it is not sufficient to feel empathy, or sympathy. Actions
speak louder than words.
Occasional
diversions make life a bit more bearable, but wasted lives are unbearable.
"Faith, Hope and Love"
Diana's funeral was an
extraordinary world event and was handled with great sensitivity by the Royal
Family. The Queen's speech earlier in the week brilliantly transcended critics
by graciously, calmly and with great reverence paying respect not only to
Diana, but also to the fundamental underpinings of family values, and the vital
need for compassionate leadership.
The
solemnity of the service was highlighted by Elton John's moving song, Tony
Blair's beautiful reading from the First Book of Corinthinians, the Archbishop
of Canterbury's proper inclusion of mention of Diana's friend,
"Dodi," and Mother Teresa, who passed away during the week.
A
tribute by Diana's brother at the service was remarkable for its forthright,
personal affection and its strong condemnation of both the media and the Royal
Family. By touching such bases, it was a memorable reminder that deep emotions
vie with harsh realities in our attempts to "rule" our worlds.
Because it was so heartfelt, it conquered questions of propriety.
The
indelible scenes of Diana's cortege being pummeled with bouquets and escorted
by applause, and of her brother flanked by Prince William and Prince Harry,
Prince Charles and Prince Phillip walking behind Diana's coffin on the way to
Westminister Abbey, brought tears to hundreds of millions of people.
In
modern times, the only comparable global emotions have been for Franklin D.
Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Gandhi, Lenin, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther
King, world-shakers, and, to a slightly lesser extent, by Popes and Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis and Princess Grace.
An
editor for The Observer remarked during the BBC's coverage of Diana's funeral
that we now live in "a culture of intimacy."
At
first blush, such a phrase sounds like a "spin" to explain away the
excesses of our age's inordinate preoccupation with celebrity and vicarious
thrills.
It
is an optimistic interpretation, the "culture of intimacy," one that
harkens to chivalrous trust and ties of duty and honor rather than prurient
fascination with the grotesque, the ugly, the uncivil side of human nature.
But
it is the right theme, the right gesture, the right touch.
Compassion.
Faith. Hope. Love.
These
are the qualities that we admired in Diana and Mother Teresa. The video, shown
often during this week of tributes, of the two of them talking and embracing
was perhaps not the most overwhelming emotional epitome of this communion of
humanity, but certainly one of the most poignant.
In
a world still filled with scourges and strife, in a world of harsh
"downsizings," ever-widening disparities of lifestyles and virtual
isolations, in a world of suffering and loneliness, mingled with wonders and
fantasies, in a world overwhelmed by its own vastness and myriad problems, in a
world whose nature changes inexorably, the pageantry of history and the panoply
of power succumb to the slow walk, the bowed head, the tears, the tears of
sorrow that a life has expired and the tears of joy to know how many care.
In
talking of the dying and the destitute for whom she cared, Mother Teresa spoke
of "how great they are."
Diana
and Mother Teresa will be remembered, vividly, for their gifts of love. (9/6)
Mother Teresa
The Poor Are With Us
In
starkest contrast with the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, the funeral, a
week later on September 13, 1997, of Mother Teresa in Calcutta was decidedly,
and perhaps fittingly, low-key.
Its
video broadcast to the United States, unfortunately, was marred by serious
engineering glitches that resulted in a loss of audio and video for lenghty
periods on WCBS and WNBC and faulty audio on WABC and programming glitches that
began too late for the former two networks and ended too early for the latter.
All
these networks were dependent on a "feed" from India television for
images of the funeral procession, the funeral itself and the cortege following
the long service. By and large, this "feed" was surprisingly inept in
its coverage, at least in comparison with traditional contemporary
"Western" standards of many, many viewpoints and striking imagery.
The images, for example, of the start of the funeral procession almost never
showed "long" establishing shots, cropping closely to the actual
procession and the few, fleeting glimpses of sidewalks along the route seemed
to indicate that all of India had stayed away except for a brief moment when
scores of observers approached closely to the passing trucks and the American
commentators took no notice whatsover of crowd size or conduct. One was left
with the scandalous impression from these initial images that the people of
Calcutta had studiously avoided turning out to pay homage to the huge city's
most famous resident.
The
final approach to the indoor area where the funeral service was conducted,
however, was more impressive as military and police stood at attention for the
last several blocks, making their absence for the vast length of the entire
procession even more puzzling.
The
very long service began with a relatively traditional and very long Roman
Catholic requiem mass presided over by about 10 Cardinals with choral music
sung by members of Mother Teresa's missionaries of charity.
Peter
Jennings of ABC had several guest commentators with him for long cutaways from
the service and one of them, writer Christopher Hitchens, unleashed a lenghty
and vitriolic diatribe against Mother Teresa as a manipulative woman who
mingled with the rich and did not try to root out the causes of poverty. The
always unflappable Jennings was obviously aghast at the attack, noting,
however, that some of the press in Calcutta had also been recently critical,
and firmly ended Hitchens' commentary, observing that such a debate was perhaps
not entirely appropriate at that time.
Jennings
ended his broadcast at 3AM, New York time, leaving viewers witless to what
followed, which, in fact, were the most moving portions of the entire funeral,
the comments by representatives of other religions and the laying of wreaths by
the representatives of many countries.
The
service should have been reversed as the representatives of the other religions
and the laying of wreaths were very deeply moving, to put it mildly. To hear the
Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and others eloquently and with great dignity and
passion pay extraordinary homage to this little foreigner in their midst was
one of the transcendent moments in world history: a reverberant echo of the
power of an physically puny individual with great, warm hands of affection, a
prayerful reminder that peace and love passeth all understanding, a resounding
answer and call for the communion of diverse cultures, a reverence for the
respect of humanity.
CBS
stayed on the air with its coverage a bit longer than NBC and ABC and Dan
Rather had perhaps his finest moment with dear, heartfelt and appropriate
closing remarks that articulately conveyed the depths of emotion that he and
millions around the world felt while NBC had already switched to yet another
special on Diana and paparazzi.
Fortunately,
Fox News, Channel 5 in New York, picked up coverage where the others left off
and stayed on the air at least until the cortege left the stadium with Mother
Teresa's body now draped not only in the India flag and her famous white and
blue sari but a plastic cover to protect her from the rain that had begun to
pour.
The
measured steps of her military guard were heart-pounding in their solemnity,
but perhaps the most stunning visual of the entire service was the manner in
which the attendant soldiers, splendidly attired in bright red headdresses
presented wreaths to the honored guests for laying at the side of Mother
Teresa's open casket. With their hesitant, precise march, one soldier at a time
carried a wreath to the casket and awaited each dignitary with great timing to
present it with a stunning snappiness, a startling, commanding shift, and then
discretely and precisely moved away while the wreath was placed and the
official made a brief gesture of respect, a bow, or clapsed hands raised high,
or a gentle touch of the casket.
This
was simple, but magnificent as these officials included queens, first ladies,
heads of state and diplomatic representatives, not just a few, but many and
each one added a noble ratchet of endearment, their aggregate honor
overwhelming.
The
most poignant moment, however, was earlier during the offertory section of the
mass when a disabled and deaf man approached the casket and the altar with one
of the service's chalices, walking with very great difficulty and, as he passed
the casket, with trembling hands. One of the clerical assistants helped him the
last few feet and the lead cardinal for the service patted his shoulder as he
turned back. This man was not the only representative of the afflicted and
needy present, of course, but his courage in those final steps brings tears
even as I write this. This is the message of Mother Teresa: direct, immediate
action, caring, love and the hell with ceremony, tradition, pomp and
circumstance.
During
the long service, the open casket was seen by television viewers mostly from a
very high overhead shot, or from a sharply raked angle that did not provide a
good view of Mother Teresa's face, a face indelible in life for its kindness
and now a face indelible in death for its stark, immobile finality, hearkening
in its drama to Andreas Mantegna's remarkable painting of the dead Christ on a
catalfalque.
Mother
Teresa had a smile no less dazzling than that of Diana, Princess of Wales, but
she also had a face that paid no heed to cosmetic notions of beauty, only to
the "great" suffering spirits caught up in this "mortal
coil." The open casket was honest as the frailest she served are beautiful
in their tormented, brave hearts. She did not shy away from reality, but
embraced it. Her serious purposes saw through the ceremonial and the
extravagant, and in her age she put away childish things.
To
jaded, Western eyes, the first part of the service was something of a
disappointment. How do you top the British and the oh-so-recent funeral of
Diana, Princess of Wales? One naively expected to see throngs of millions,
oceans of grief, and a climactic cultural flourish of memorable colors,
fabrics, flowers, faces. Of course, Diana's world was mostly of glamour and
Mother Teresa's world was mostly very close to the humble ground. Diana danced.
Mother Teresa merely cherished life, the life of others.
In
the end, Diana was a lost "soul" who struggled to find meaning in
life and Mother Teresa gave meaning to life.
More Than A Woman
A
few hours after the service for Mother Teresa, I went to my local coffeeshop to
read the papers and in the background heard its radio blaring, by chance, the
BeeGees' "More Than A Woman." Mother Teresa was more than a woman. I
cried. (9/13)
----------------
![[ Princess Diana, 1961 - 1997 ]](http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/mem.gif)
![[ Mother Teresa and Princess Diana ]](http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/4teresa.jpg)
A small tribute to Princess Diana and Mother Teresa
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Having
just watched the Princess' funeral on the day Mother Teresa died, I can not
believe that anyone would not have been moved ... that their hearts would not
have cried out to Princess Diana's family, especially her sons, Prince William
and Prince Harry... and to all those whos lives the tiny nun, Mother Teresa,
touched.
At the
Princess' funeral, the two boys were so very brave... walking for so long
through public streets, following their mother's coffin with their father,
Prince Charles. I don't know if I could have done that. And the beautiful
little boquet of flowers on the Princess' coffin, a small card with only one
word on it - Mummy - was so heart wrenching... These boys deserve a lot of
respect for their bravery and their love for their mother. At least after the
funeral, the boys will have a chance to grieve in private at the Princess'
island grave site.
Earl
Spencer, Princess Diana's brother, gave his speech. His tribute to his sister
described her so properly ... even with his small comments to the media and the
Royal family. My heart went out to him as he almost broke down near the end ...
the whole UK seemed to be effected by him, talking of his sister's love of life
and kindness. Everyone cheered, even those in Westminster Abbey, not just the
crowds of millions outside.
The most
moving part, the sadest part for me, was listening to Elton John's song for
Princess Diana. It felt so ... right ... The Royal family were in tears. How
could anyone who knew her not be in tears? Even people in the streets were
crying for the death of their hero. How much more so would her friends and
family be torn up inside, remembering her and how she would no longer be among
them?
A
beautiful farewell from the people who lined the side of the streets was the
way they threw flowers at Princess Diana's herse, paving the way with them. By
the end of the procession to the ancestoral land of the Spencer family, flowers
were covering the roof and bonnet of the herse itself. The people cheered for
their princess as she was driven past, in her coffin, to go to her final
resting place. Even England's M1 was brought to a standstill, just as the rest
of the country had been, too. The people stopped their lives to say goodbye to
their Princess.
I could
say nothing better about her than either her brother or the song by Elton
John... So I shall quote the
Earl Spencer's moving tribute to his sister and Elton John's lyrics...
Neither
can I do better than the simple and beautiful pages of Memories of Princess Diana by the British
government.
Please,
all of you who feel moved by Princess Diana's death ... the grief her family
and friends are going through ... and anyone else with a heart ... please,
please boycot all of these horrible magazines who pay these pathetic
paparazzi for their disgusting photographs. These people, the paparazzi and
the editors of such magazines, should not be allowed to go on. When will the
next person die because of them? Even people's private lives should not be
invaded by these amoral creatures, let alone should they be a danger to
someone's life! These people do, as Earl Spencer said, have blood on their
hands.
But, not
only the horrible paparazzi, but the drink-drivers of the world. How many more
will need to die before people learn to stop drink-driving? Please, stop
your friends and people you know from driving if they have been drinking
Don't let those you know also become like the paparazzi and have blood on their
hands ...
I am sure
that the Princess would have wanted her death to help others, and to save the
lives of others. Please boycot paparazzi and the magazines who use their
photos and please make drink-driving socially unacceptable, even if it
is just among your friends and family. Please do not let the Princess'
death have been in vain ... Remember her, and try to help others like she would
have tried to help them herself.
One more
thing ... in the city today, at Melbourne on the 6th of September 1997, the day
of the Princess of Wales' funeral, there was a beautiful memorial from the
people of Melbourne - outside St Paul's Cathedral was a section of grass, at
the corner, that had been totally filled with flowers and small notes to
farewell the Princess. She meant a lot, not only to the people of the UK, but
to many people all over the world. The flowers were a testiment of this... I
felt sad, yet moved, at seeing these expressions from the heart.
Farewell,
Princess Diana ... You did the best you could to help everyone ... Those you
touched will never forget you. May your friends and family feel God's peace on
them ... and may your death change the world.
But not only
the Princess died this week - another remarkable and caring woman followed the
Princess to Heaven. Mother Teresa
(1910 - 1997) died early this morning. Her whole life was given over
to helping the poor and the needy. She lived her life in poverty, doing her
best to help the world selflessly. She was a friend of the Princess, and both
of them will be sadly missed. In yet another strange coincidence, it seems that
Mother Theresa was very upset this week by a special video that was being aired
about her on TV that was not accurate and this may have caused her heart to
give out. Maybe that, combined with the death of a friend, caused Mother
Teresa's death...
Of
Princess Diana, Mother Teresa had said, "She felt very sorry for the poor.
She wanted to do something for them. That's why she stood so close to me. Diana
helped me to help the poor. She was very anxious with the lot of the poorest.
That's why she is so beloved to me."
But,
whatever the cause of Mother Teresa's death, the world has lost two wonderful
women in the space of a week. May they both rest in peace, and may others
follow their paths of caring and love towards others. We need more people like
them in this world. But the world will mourn, remembering these two women and
the good that they did for the world.
http://www.gargaro.com/diana.html
http://www.gargaro.com/diana.html
http://www.gargaro.com/mother_teresa/
http://www.gargaro.com/diana.htmlhttp://www.gargaro.com/mother_teresa/
------
www.cbc.ca/archives/.../diana-princess-of-wales-dies-in-paris.html - Cached - Similar21 Mar 2013 ... Princess Diana's
fatal accident shocks Canadians. ... her the nickname, "the
People's Princess," is undeniable as the world mourns her death.
People's Princess," is undeniable as the world mourns her death.
------
News Release
Archive
LIEUTENANT
GOVERNOR--LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR EXTENDS CONDOLENCES
-----------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE TO EDITORS: The
following is a message from Lt.-Gov. James
Kinley on the death of the
Princess of Wales.
All Nova Scotians are
shocked and saddened by the tragic death of
Diana, Princess of Wales.
The Princess of Wales is
remembered fondly by Nova Scotians from
the time that she visited
Nova Scoria in June 1983. Her
charismatic personality and
her genuine concern for disadvantaged
people have won for her
recognition worldwide. We in Nova Scotia
have followed with
admiration her humanitarian activities around
the world on behalf of many
charities and people who have been
overcome by misfortune
through illness and war.
Most recently, we have been
greatly impressed by her courageous
actions to have
anti-personnel mines banned throughout the world.
Now, unexpected misfortune
has taken her life, but she leaves
with us the legacy of a
beautiful princess, a loving mother, and
a caring person who will
continue to be an inspiration to us all.
On behalf of the people of
Nova Scotia, I extend our condolences
to her two sons, William and
Harry, to the Royal Family, and to
her own Spencer family.
-30-
ngr September 3, 1997 - 9:00 am
Jan 15,
2011 · During the first week
of their 17 day visit to Canada. On a walkabout at Garrison Grounds in Halifax,
Nova Scotia. 14 June 1983.
Nov 14,
2010 · Diana and Charles in Halifax, Nova Scotia at the
beginning of their two and a half week tour of Canada. Date: 15.6.83.
-------------------
Tourists
outnumber Britons mourning Diana.
CBC News ... In Britain, the first anniversary of the death of Diana,
Princess of Wales appears to be a muted ... Nova ...
-----------------
Butterflies & Blazes
Articles - How Men Grieve
Articles - How Men Grieve
Journey of Hearts
A Healing Place in CyberSpaceTM
How Men Grieve
by Bob Blauner
by Bob Blauner
This article first appeared in USA Weekend, October 10-12, 1997
and is reprinted with permission of the author and the publisher.
Last month the world lost two of its best known and best loved
mothers. Mother Teresa never had children of her own, but she was the
archetypal mother, a symbol of compassion and nurturance who captured the
world's imagination for her work with the poor and the sick.
And, of course, Princess Diana, a "real" mother who
also cared for the suffering and who left behind two young sons, Princes
William and Harry.
My study of boys who lost their mothers at an early age suggests
that the serious "grief work" comes later, typically decades later.
So in the years to come, but perhaps not until their late 30s, 40s or even 50s,
these two English lads will have their work cut out for them.
But even as boys mature, the work of grieving--and grief is real
work--does not come easily. Men have difficulty with mourning in general and,
most painfully of all, a mother's death. For a man, the death of his mother may
be the most difficult of all life's losses to fully face and feel. The death of
a father is "easier" because our father feelings are more accessible
to our conscious mind than are our mother feelings.
Mourning is becoming
aware,
pondering deeply, going through and getting past, the varied feelings we have toward a loved one, feelings that were there all along but tend to be called forth dramatically by death. |
Mourning, after all, is simply becoming aware, pondering deeply,
going through and getting past, the varied feelings we have toward a loved one,
feelings that were there all along but tend to be called forth dramatically by
death. For our fathers we have learned to name those feelings, whether they are
anger, loss, betrayal, admiration--the possibilities are endless.
But with our mothers, the feelings have deeper roots. Their
origins go back to infancy, even to the womb, long before the onset of
language. They remain inchoate, often blurred and fuzzy, as well as ambivalent
and suppressed. That is why it is not easy, even for an adult man, to look at
his relationship with his mother with a clear eye.
Compared with women, men tend to be less in touch with their
emotions, particularly with their deep-seated feelings of sadness and loss. For
many men it is still not "manly" to cry, to let all their feelings
hand out. Unfortunately, anger is too often the emotion of choice.
...men tend to be less in touch
with their emotions, particularly with the deep- seated feelings of sadness
and loss.
It is still not "manly" to cry, to let all their feelings hand out. Unfortunately, anger is too often the emotion of choice. |
The death of a mother also reopens the big wounds of childhood,
the time when a boy had to let go of this mother, his first love, in order to
"grow up and be a man." Girls grow up to become women without such an
abrupt break, and for that reason their relationships with their
mothers--difficult, even stormy, as they can be in the externals of life are
not so deeply conflicted. This may be why so many men, even in mid-life and old
age, are unable to "return" to the mother after that youthful separation,
to accept her gifts and acknowledge her great influence as well as their common
bond, and instead remain locked in relations of alienation, distance or
routinized obligation, often interlaced with anger, guilt, resentment, and
disappointment on both sides.
Such an outcome is not likely to be the fate of heirs to the
British throne, because they were still enmeshed in loving relationships with
their mother at the time of her death. It is true that mourning will be
especially painful because of the way Diana died without time for her sons to
say good bye, for their mother to bestow her blessings.
Centuries back, in the Middle ages, death was omnipresent and
people did not fear it is as much as we moderns do. For the privileged strata,
a "Good Death" was celebrated as the high point of a good life. In
Drawings of the Good Death, a patriarch lies on his deathbed, at home,
surrounded by family, friends, pets and the trappings of power and possessions.
This was the time to impart wisdom, above all to say ones' good byes.
Today, we wonder what will happen to William and Harry as they
divide their time between such all-male environments as boarding schools and
their father's home. How much of their mother's spirit will they be able to
carry with them as the exigencies of their father's temperament and the
austerity of the House of Windsor become more and more insistent?
For example, will William and Harry be able to carry on their
mother's legacy of social justice? This was a matter of great concern to her,
as her brother emphasized in his moving eulogy.
I suspect, from my years of studying men and mothers, that
Diana's spirit, like the spirits of most mothers, will not be easily expunged.
Boys can grow up deeply connected to their mothers whether these mothers remain
alive or passes on long ago.
This may be somewhat easier for boys and men in the Untied
Kingdom. Although the British are justly famous for their stiff upper lips and
their ability to keep their emotions under wraps, they are not ashamed, as
Americans too often are, of being close to their mothers.
In the United States, we feel a conflict between fully embracing
our mothers, wholeheartedly expressing our love for them, and being a
"real man." Why are we so afraid of being labeled "mama's
boys," or cowed by vulgar Freudian notions of Oedipal complexes? Men in
other countries around the world do not carry such a burden.
Many male African-American
students have proudly brought their mothers
to my university classes and told me that their mothers were their best friends, something I have never heard from a single white male student in 35 years of teaching. |
Nor is this conflict as present among racial minorities in the
United States. Over the years, many male African-American students have proudly
brought their mothers to my university classes and told me that their mothers
were their best friends, something I have never heard from a single white male
student in 35 years of teaching.
One day in the future, it is possible that the expression "Like
Mother, like son," will be as unexceptional as its counterpart, "Like
father, like son," and that people will be able to say of a boy, without
raising eyebrows (as people in England have been saying about Prince William):
"That boy is the spitting image of his mother."
As the world continues to mourn the loss of the charismatic
Princess Diana, let us honor the love between her and her two sons, a love that
will sustain them long after her untimely death and may even encourage us
ordinary mortals to honor our own mothers' spirits.
About the Author:
About the Author:
For two decades, sociologist Bob Blauner, professor emeritus at
the University of California, Berkeley has taught courses on men and grieving.
The article was an adaptation from the book, Our Mother's Spirits: Great
Writers on the Death of Mothers and the Grief of Men.
------------------
MOTHER TERESA
--------------------
QUOTE:
But we do
know this much: in their public work, both Mother Teresa and Princess Diana
stood out as symbols of love and compassion, publicly speaking out for those
who were needy, powerless, and downtrodden. What what we know of their
charitable work has inspired many people to take a greater interest in causes
helping their fellow man, which is the standard of Judgment Christ uses in the
parable of the sheep and the goats.
Beyond
that, the complexities of who someone is, what their nature is, what their personality
is, what is hard for them to do, and what is easy, what struggles they have
had, or mistakes or sins they have made, what position in life they hold, what
they do with their opportunities – even with celebrities, where we have the
illusion of knowing everything, though I’m sure we don’t – only God knows the
full, true picture of a person’s life, and their heart, and only God can judge.
Princess
Diana and Mother Teresa:
The
Fallacy of Outward Appearances
by Jesse Ancona
It is just
a little over five years now (I write this in 2002) since Princess Diana and
Mother Teresa died in the same week.
The
world’s attention was riveted on Diana’s death, so much so that Mother Teresa
died almost unnoticed. Her death was reported, but it came the day before
Diana’s funeral, so did not get the press it otherwise would have gotten. I
don’t think it was a coincidence that these two women, from opposite stations
in life, both grown to prominent attention in the world, women who had met each
other, and spoken to each other not long before their deaths, left this world
within a few days of each other. Frankly, I think it was a mercy to Mother
Teresa to die at this time, because I am sure she would not have wanted her
death and funeral to become the kind of circus Diana’s became.
The lives
and deaths of these two women are a kind of parable of our times that is, as
Christ’s parables often were, "hard to understand."
But, like
many parables, it seems deceptively easy.
At the
time, all the adulation and attention was on Diana. She was young, attractive,
fashionable, married to a prince, the mother of two young boys, and died
tragically before her time: most of her natural life should have been ahead of
her. Not to mention the soap-opera interest in her personal life.
She was
also the opposite of the Fairy Tales one is read as a child. When the poor girl
marries the prince, she is supposed to live happily ever after. She is not
supposed to find out, the day before her wedding, that her bridegroom loves
another woman he has been seeing for many years, even before that woman’s
current marriage. She is not supposed to be trapped into a marriage where,
regardless of how she looks or acts, or the children she bears him, her husband
has no heart or attention for her. And, she is certainly not supposed to be
shunned when she finally leaves him, stripped of her title, and harried by the
press to her untimely death, leaving her young boys orphaned.
So, there
is a tragic twist to the death of Diana we don’t see with Mother Teresa.
Mother
Teresa died after a full and productive life, having founded an order of nuns
called the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India dedicated to serving the
poor. Almost 50 years later, the Missionaries of Charity have grown from 12
sisters in India to over 3,000 in 517 missions throughout 100 countries
worldwide1. Her
death was not tragic, but the natural end to a long and successful life.
Diana’s
death was unnecessary, stupid, tragic, and too soon.
Of course,
it is easy to be angry that thousands would line the streets to mourn Diana,
and the news agencies spent so much more time on her life and death than they
did on that of Mother Teresa. But since this time, more and more people have
come out publicly, decrying the public's favour of Diana over Mother Teresa,
saying how shameful this difference is, considering their very different lives.
It is easy
to say one is worthier than the other. And, when comparing Princess Diana with
Mother Teresa, it is the easiest thing in the world to dismiss the former with
little thought. In fact, one writer does it in a few sweeping words:
"The
timing of Mother Teresa's death (in the midst of worldwide grief over the death
of Britain's Princess Diana) calls us to consider the difference between service
to humanity rendered out of the need for self-assertion and what is
done for others out of self-sacrifice [emphasis mine].
Whaid
G. Rose2"
Certainly,
it is easier to say that Mother Teresa spent her life helping the poor, and
consistently made decisions that garnered almost no criticism, unlike Diana,
and her sufferings were chosen and self-imposed, and not caused by forces
beyond her control.
But to
dismiss Diana as a person, moreover, to characterize even her noblest acts as
mere plays for attention and "self-assertion," is an unnecessarily
cruel judgment.
I was in
church that Sabbath after the deaths of Diana and Mother Teresa, and not a word
was spoken about either event from the pulpit; nor was it something I heard
anyone bring up in conversation or fellowship. I remember being disturbed by
this act of omission, feeling it to be one of disrespect and cruel dismissal of
two people whose deaths at least deserved a respectful mention. But as Keith
Hunt points out, in many Sabbath-keeping churches, perhaps the majority wear
blinders, unable to see any virtue in those who do not share in certain
doctrinal understandings of the Bible 3. I would add that, if some Christians
deny the actual Christianity of others, how can they ever see virtue, where it
exists, in common humanity?
Perhaps
Mr. Rose felt his people needed to be told that the work of Mother Teresa was a
fine thing that Christians should admire, and in his discernment, understood
that, without his editorial, many would simply condemn her because of her
church affiliation. In that, I think he was right. And perhaps he felt it
necessary to mention the death of Diana, as it was so much in the news. And to
encourage his membership, especially in North America, to see virtue in the
life and work of Mother Teresa. This thought is expanded upon in Keith Hunt's
article, Simple Christianity.
Perhaps
Mr. Rose also wisely discerned that to find any virtue in the mixed-up jumble
of Diana's life, with all her confused emotions, her much reported acts, both
good and bad, would be too difficult for many to hear and understand.
Certainly, for a short, pithy message, Mother Teresa's public life clearly
exemplified the virtues he wished to emphasize, and I have nothing against his
choice. I would simply have wished he did not feel the need to do so by
vilifying Diana. It should not have been necessary to speak ill of her work and
her motives in order to spotlight the value of Mother Teresa's life and work.
But let us
look further at their lives. Teresa was born into a religious family, but
decided on her own that her vocation was to be a nun. Even so, she did not do
what was expected of her, and in her early years, often earned criticism from
within her order.
While
Diana was born into nobility, she was raised in a broken home, and was little
known, working in a day-care centre, when the Prince of Wales decided it was
time to get married. The quest was on; the hunt had begun. As head of the
Church of England, Charles could only marry an Anglican girl of royal or noble
blood, and she must be a virgin. Watchers of royalty and nobility noted that
most of the known virgins were Catholic, and not an appropriate match. Many
otherwise suitable girls were not virgins. So we know that she was a young
woman who believed in chastity, and preserved herself for her future husband.
There was nothing immoral about her life before Charles: she lived quietly,
visited with her girlfriends, and worked with children.
It became
evident that Diana was the best candidate. So, they were introduced, got to
know each other, and Diana was swept off her feet. She was shy; Charles was
older, was well-read, well-spoken, and a prince. She was smitten. Charles
looked at Diana, and what did he see? A pretty young thing, a suitable mate, a
proper mother to his children. Anything more? Not enough to break off his relationship
with his long-time girlfriend. Beyond that, one can only speculate. The whole
situation was a disaster waiting to happen.
When Diana
found out, the day before the wedding, she should have called it off. Easy
enough to say, but how many ordinary brides have the courage to break off their
upcoming marriage the day before the wedding, regardless of what they find out
about their fiancé? For Diana, the stakes were much higher. She was facing the
cancellation of, not only the normally-elaborate wedding preparations, but
those of a state ceremony. How could she do this, and not be hated by her
entire country, shunned by her peers – and humiliate her family? It may have
been the best decision to make, but how could she make it alone? And, if she
had, how would history have judged her, and how would we have judged her?
She went
ahead with the wedding, no doubt hoping against hope that marriage would turn
Charles’ heart towards her, and she could win him fully for herself. She may
have even thought that having his children would cement their marriage. She
went ahead into the destiny that seemed predetermined and inescapable.
Unlike
Diana, Teresa was more headstrong and stubborn, and once she had made up her
mind, no one could change it. She was sent to India by her religious order, and
was teaching the wealthy daughters of the British. The school was in a walled
compound, so the girls would not be exposed to the poverty and sad sights all
around them. Like another fairy tale, they were in a place like Sans Souci,
where no sorrow could enter in. Teresa, like the young prince, wanted to know
what was beyond the walls.
She saw
people suffering, dying, and with no one to care for them. Her first act of
mercy was to pick up a dying man from the gutter and take him to the apartment
of a friend, where she nursed him until he died, a scant few hours later.
Physically, there was little she could do for him; spiritually, she let him die
comforted and loved. She had found her ministry.
Her
religious order saw it differently: she was a very bad nun! The prime vow a nun
takes is not chastity or poverty, it is obedience! She was punished for her
presumption, and told to do what she was ordered. She obeyed, but continued,
through every available means, to lobby to do the work she had to do. It
eventually led to her starting her own new order of nuns, who helped her to
care for the neglected and unloved.
And that
was the difference between Mother Teresa and many aid societies. She said
herself that her ministry was not about the physical aid, but about loving
those in need. Mother Teresa said that in each leper, each dying person, she
saw the face of Christ. She did not preach to them, or try to convert them, and
when they were dying, she would often call for a leader of their religion, and
shame them into coming and ministering the final rites for the dying person
they themselves had abandoned.
This may
be why, when so many Christian organizations were expelled from India, Mother
Teresa’s order was not. The people loved her, and no politician would dare to
touch her. She worked many years, barely known outside of India, but eventually
her work became common knowledge.
Diana,
after her marriage, also decided which way she would go. The people also loved
her. She seemed to care for them; she showed them attention, and wasn’t aloof.
She felt her position required her to look her best, and, going against the
royal tradition of frumpiness, she dressed in a way that brought honour to her
position, and won the attention of the world. Fashion, trivial as it may seem,
was the first way she won the world’s attention. But she didn’t go with the
established houses, she used her own taste. And she had excellent taste: her
efforts helped many young British designers become noticed and established. And
it was her first foray into asserting her own identity. Like Teresa was a
"bad nun," Diana was a "bad princess," not simply following
dead tradition, but using her own best judgment about how she should comport
herself in the position she found herself in.
While the
palace, particularly the Queen, fumed, little could be done. The people loved
her.
What did
Diana do next? It was expected that she would support some tasteful charities,
like supporting theatre societies, or animal welfare, or other respectable
causes well-loved by nobles and royals.
Instead,
what did she do? She adopted AIDS as her first cause. When she went into the
hospital and met the various AIDS patients, then held the hand of one of the
sufferers, the photos went around the world. Suddenly, what doctors had tried
to teach people for many years was understood in one picture: if Princess Diana
could hold the hand of an AIDS patient, it was all right to touch these people,
and help them.
This is
not a small thing. Until this time, many people with AIDS could not even get
some medical assistance, due to ignorance. I know a man with non-AIDS-related
Kaposi’s Sarcoma who was always treated by ignorant health-care workers as
though he had AIDS. They would wear gloves and masks, and often refuse to care
for him. His wife always had to come to his defense. Those who did have AIDS
had few to defend them.
Like
Mother Teresa, Diana believed in caring for people, and I think people knew it,
and that’s why they loved her.
The
palace, however, was incensed. She was told not to repeat the incident. AIDS! A
disease transmitted in such a vile way – this cause was not fit for a royal to
touch. Diana ignored palace pressure. I don’t know what went on in her mind,
but I believe she thought something like this: "Here I am, in this
position where people take my picture, many people love me, and will watch what
I do. What is the best way to use my position to help people?" And she
decided to use her influence to sway people to mercy for a despised and needy
group of sufferers. She never spoke about homosexuality or illegal drug use, or
the causes of the disease, she just tried to help the sufferers, and make it
acceptable for others to help them, too.
Another
cause close to her heart, the banning of land mines, was even harder for the
palace to take. To stand up for a socially embarrassing disease was one thing,
but royalty were not to take political stands, or do anything that might
infringe on the British government’s views or action (despite acceptance of Charles'
no doubt well-meaning interference with British architecture, leading to its
current, disastrous "heritage laws"), or stir up political action,
let alone try to get legislation passed throughout the world.
But Diana
knew that many children died or were mutilated every year from stepping on, or
playing with, old land mines from previous wars. She wanted the use of mines
stopped, and agreements signed promising this, and she wanted money to go into
cleaning up the lands that have these horrible death-dealing implements waiting
in the soil for the innocent.
This was
the cause she was fighting for at her death. Lloyd Axeworthy, a Canadian
minister of parliament, was on his way to Britain for the talks on landmines,
and ended up attending Diana’s funeral.
Yes, Diana
had many personal problems, most stemming from her marital difficulties, though
she was constantly attacked by the palace, and Charles did not rise to her
defense. Even people in lesser positions, like those in dealing with protocol,
would neglect to advise her on certain matters, or undermine her or set her up
in various situations to look bad. It must have been a living hell for a shy,
sheltered young woman to suddenly find herself in the limelight, with no
support from "The Firm" or her unloving husband. She no doubt blamed
her inability to make him love her on her own perceived inadequacies. This is
the background against which she bore and raised her children, went out in
public, and devoted herself to causes.
I believe
life with Charles, a headstrong and stubborn man who was also emotionally
withdrawn, led to the gradual disintegration of her sense of herself. That his
problems understanding, let alone displaying "natural affection" are
severely impaired was demonstrated when he did not even go to the hospital when
his own son was rushed there with a severe head injury. He perceived his duty
to be elsewhere, and had to be told "it would look bad" if he did not
go to his son's side. This may have been the result of his upbringing. He also
was a shy boy, and not "manly enough" for his military father, who
felt there was too much "petticoat influence" in the palace, so sent
him off to several difficult private schools, in order to make a man of him.4
Charles
did succeed in learning how to communicate with other boys, and later, men, and
earn their respect. To overcome his painful shyness, he may have learned to
simply repress his feelings, and operate based on clever imitation of what was
expected of him. There is no indication that he ever learned how to relate well
to women. Like most Princes of Wales, he had endless streams of short-term
girlfriends spirited in and out of the palace. His only really healthy
relationship with a woman seemed to be with Camilla, with whom he'd been
friends for many years. I believe he has always loved her, and would have
wanted to marry her, but she was not "an acceptable candidate" for
the heir to the British throne to marry.
At that
point, he had a choice. He could abdicate his position as prince, and heir to
the throne, like his great-uncle, to marry the woman he loved. Perhaps, having
seen the alienation from family and royal society his great-uncle had suffered,
he did not wish to take that route. He knew he would have to marry some day, in
order to produce future heirs. Whether he thought about his future bride or
not, we don't know, but it appears that he was determined to keep Camilla in
his life.
Apparently,
their affair continued into and throughout her marriage with Parker-Bowles, as
it continues to this day, after Diana's death and the breakup of Camilla's
marrige. It seems that Charles and Camilla, had they been an ordinary couple,
would have married, and could possibly have had as long and happy a marriage as
they have had a friendship and love affair.
I have
seen, first hand, what family wealth does to cripple children's chances of
growing up with a strong and separate sense of self: they can never become
fully independent. Money ties them to their parents well into adulthood, and
affects their careers, their mates, their lifestyles and their friends. The
consequences of going against their families is more than being disinherited,
and giving up security for uncertainty, in involves a child's greatest fear:
being abandoned. I cannot imagine what it must be like to grow up in a royal
family, and what pressures shaped Charles' sense of self, and his choices.
Diana was
not only ill-prepared to deal with Charles' problems, she was so busy with her
children and the work that comes with royalty, that it was easier to simply
cope the best she could. She threw herself into the things she could succeed
at. But she paid a high price. She developed eating disorders, which she
finally overcame, and, instead of hiding her shame, she selflessly spoke out
about these problems, in the hopes her suffering could help others. Her
emotional agony and loneliness also led, it appears, to unwise affairs with
men. One of these affairs led to the press attention that ultimately caused her
death.
Obviously,
how she handled her sorrow was not always wise, and Mother Teresa, after
meeting and speaking with Diana, on being asked for her opinion on the
Princess, said, "She is a good mother." While Teresa was careful not
to pass judgment on Diana for her indiscretions, at the time, it struck me as
somewhat "damning with faint praise," considering Diana's other
causes, including one they had in common, the relief of the suffering of AIDS
patients.
Anyone
with common sense, being asked to compare what they knew of Princess Diana with
Mother Teresa, would say that Mother Teresa’s life was lived more wisely, and
with better judgment. But each woman was born into her own time, her own place,
her own station in life, and with her own personality. From childhood, Teresa
was strong-willed. Diana, however, was always shy and withdrawn. For her to
assert herself was probably much more difficult than it was for Teresa. And
Teresa was never courted by a charming prince in her youth, so those
temptations and potential problems never presented themselves to her.
The
temptations and pressures of the entire world looking on are those most of us
have never had to face: from the beginning of her courtship, throughout her
marriage, Diana’s life was scrutinized by the world. Teresa grew up, and
started her initial vocation to the monastic life, as well as her second,
personal vocation among the sick and dying in India, in obscurity, and by the
time the world noticed her, her mission and work were well-established, and her
conflicts with her order, and with the Catholic hierarchy, were over and
solved. She did not have to have those battles under the scrutiny of the
tabloids.
Both women
defied legitimate authority, but peacefully, and lawfully, in order to follow
what they felt was the calling of their position, and both suffered for it,
though differently, and with different outcomes. The Catholic Church finally
supported Teresa’s cause, but Prince Charles persisted in turning his face against
his wife, and would not defend her from the pressure and the retributions of
the palace.
The longer
and harder we look at the lives of these two women, the harder the parable
becomes to read. What at first seemed simple becomes more and more complex.
I think
what we are meant to walk away with is this: whatever position we find
ourselves in, we are to make the best of that situation to do what we feel
called to do, to help others, and to use our influence to do good. Ideally, we
should grow in the knowledge of what is right, and practice making the right
decisions, however painful the consequences. In this way, we can develop the
character to live our lives without bringing disaster on ourselves and those
around us. While many innocent people suffer disasters not of their making,
they are at least better equipped to cope with them than people whose
situations directly stem from their own bad choices. Few of us have had the
strong will to fight as many battles as Mother Teresa did to accomplish her
goals.
Diana
allowed herself to be persuaded to do things not in her best interest, and took
solace where there was no ultimate satisfaction. That she was shy was not the
whole story: her passion for children and for suffering people galvanized her
to risk the displeasure of the palace, but she was unable to bring this same
strength to bear on every situation in her life, though she finally had the
courage to leave her disastrous marriage. Most of us have made wrong decisions
and had to live with them, but thankfully, not ones that would affect a nation,
and be reported daily in the papers.
But I do
believe that ordinary people can tell if you have a good heart or not, and if
they love you, this is a high commendation 5. Whatever your faults or errors in
judgment, if you can honestly win the love of the people, that speaks volumes,
not that it is any guarantee: people can also be fickle or swayed.
Diana had
no one to depend on. She was trying to live this impossible life without the only
reliable help and source of strength: God. Even without God's help, she drew on
her generally-decent upbringing, her natural love and compassion, and tried to
do the right thing, and help others. But she did not have the resources to help
or heal herself. She struggled, she did what she could, and she made many
mistakes. We do not know how unbelievers will be judged, but Paul tells us they
will be judged by the law that is written in their hearts: their conscience.
There will be a Final Judgment for good reason: we are totally incapable of
reading people's hearts, knowing their lives inside out -- even knowing them
better than they do themselves -- and even if we did, we would not have the
wisdom to weigh these things and arrive at a proper judgment of their lives.
For
example, it is important to note, that not everyone agrees with the popular
press's assessment of Mother Teresa's actions. According to Christopher
Hitchens6, Mother
Teresa's views against luxury extended even to her care of the poor and sick in
run-down buildings, where people were diagnosed (and often misdiagnosed) there,
and kept from real hospitals, though when she herself became ill, she went to
hospital, and received the best medical care available, including a pacemaker.
Ailing nuns of her Order, however, were simply told to pray harder to get well7. While I would
hope it is not true, this kind of occurrance is very typical in cults, and is
sadly familiar to any former cult member.
Hitchens
also shows Mother Teresa going against her much-repeated statement that she
would never get mixed up with or meddle with politics, while showing photos of
her with Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and others --
including Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, scam
artist John-Roger, and Charles Keating, convicted Savings & Loan embezzler.
She even
wrote to the judge in the Keating case, (Judge Lance Ito, before his O.J.
Simpson trial fame) pleading for the defendant, on the basis of his financial
generosity to her Order. The book includes several documents, not only
including this letter, but also a letter to her by Keating prosecutor Paul
Turley, asking her to return the money, and follow the character of Christ, who
would never have kept the fruits of a crime. The nun apparently never replied
or responded to this request, and the money was never returned.
And, as
the reviewer of Hitchen's book continues:
Hitchens
also adds flesh to that oft-repeated anecdote about Teresa being unable to open
a New York City home because of bureaucratic red tape. It turns out this is
half true. The state did demand Mother T put in an elevator before moving
people into the run-down building. But they also offered to pay the cost of
putting one in. Teresa refused, unwilling to coddle the crippled with such a
luxury.
Ultimately,
though, Hitchens says his argument is not with Mother Teresa but with us, not
with a deceiver but with the deceived. She has never pretended to be anything
but a religious zealot on a strict doctrinal mission, he observes. It is we who
overlook this8.
But we do
know this much: in their public work, both Mother Teresa and Princess Diana
stood out as symbols of love and compassion, publicly speaking out for those
who were needy, powerless, and downtrodden. What what we know of their
charitable work has inspired many people to take a greater interest in causes
helping their fellow man, which is the standard of Judgment Christ uses in the
parable of the sheep and the goats.
Beyond
that, the complexities of who someone is, what their nature is, what their
personality is, what is hard for them to do, and what is easy, what struggles
they have had, or mistakes or sins they have made, what position in life they
hold, what they do with their opportunities – even with celebrities, where we
have the illusion of knowing everything, though I’m sure we don’t – only God
knows the full, true picture of a person’s life, and their heart, and only God
can judge.
---------------
Oh David... this is from the 60s or 70s... remember...
thx 4 the share... Christian the Lion used 2 be at Princess Diana's favourite
store in London.
CHRISTIAN THE LION
-------------
The Saddest Fairy Tale
By Howard
Chua-EoanThursday, Aug. 16, 2007
AP
Personal
correspondance between Diana, Princess of Wales and her father-in-law Prince Philip
reveal a tender side to their relationship.
[editor's
note: This story was first published in a limited-edition commemorative special
issue of TIME in 1998.]
Once upon
a time there was a little girl who learned she had been expected to be a boy.
So intent were her parents on having a son that she had to wait a week after
her birth to receive a name, the Honorable Diana Frances Spencer. Two older
sisters and the brother who eventually arrived had royal godparents, but her
father and mother picked commoners — rich ones, certainly, but untitled
nevertheless — to swear their faith for her at the baptismal font.
Her first
memory was of plastic, a warm synthetic smell touched off by sunlight on her
stroller. She also remembered visits to the churchyard grave of the child her
parents conceived just before her, a boy who lived barely 10 hours. Had he
survived, she often wondered, would she have existed? Or would her mother,
having produced a male heir, have left her husband for another man sooner than
she actually did, breaking up the family before Diana could be born? She wished
she were her oldest sister, the firstborn, the star of the family: smart,
extroverted, unafraid to greet their hated stepmother with an insolent burp. At
nine, Diana would bravely declare that she would marry only once — and only for
love — and never, never divorce. But even as she said that, she stared out, as
she would often do, from beneath her bangs, never quite looking anyone in the
eye. For her parents, once in love, were no longer.
Once upon
another time this little girl would grow up and fall in love and marry a prince
and grow so happy for such a splendid moment that the whole world paused to
marvel and rejoice with her, falling in love with Diana in love. The sunshine
of her shy smile outshone royalty. she became the most famous woman on earth.
But she learned quickly that though she had become a princess and borne her
husband an heir, she could never truly become his queen. And when she died,
suddenly, the day after the 36th anniversary of her christening, the world,
still in love, stopped for a very long moment to grieve.
Why did so
many mourn her so, and why do they mourn her still? Was it because the feats
and foibles of British royalty have always been such an integral part of the
world's story — and because Diana acted out the latest chapters in Britain's
thousand-year-old soap opera with such compelling charisma, with such a
facility for manipulation and melodrama? Was it just that: the flawed heroine
vanishes, and we are bereft of narrative? Or was it because her unexpected end
gave emotional resonance to the profuse and sometimes conflicting details of
her intensely scrutinized life, uncovering omens through tragic retrospective,
inchoate but nevertheless consoling proofs of destiny and meaning? Or perhaps
all of that is not quite the heart of the grieving. Perhaps the mourning was
over something simple yet profound, something cosmic yet common...
What
cannot be denied is that in the beginning there was majesty, that fascinating
natural resource of her homeland, a country celebrated by its greatest bard as
"this England ... this teeming womb of royal kings, fear'd by their breed
and famous by their birth." Still, majesty is a concept that requires
re-enchantment every generation or so — and in this time the spell was Diana.
Her
mother-in-law, the Queen, had once worked the magic. Elizabeth had continued
the task thrust upon her father, purging the dynasty of the scandal that had
threatened to ruin it, brought on by her irresponsible playboy of an uncle, who
shirked duty and gave up the throne for a forbidden marriage. Elizabeth
furthered the reconstruction of the Windsors by making the clan work, making it
the inspiring exemplar of ideal family life, albeit one adorned with crowns and
tiaras. Elizabeth would serve. She would persevere. She would be dutiful. She
would obey.
And then
came Diana, the girl chosen to refresh the line, to bear its heirs, to be the
new smiling face of the family. Despite the stately filigree Elizabeth had
embroidered onto the Windsor facade, Diana found the dynasty dysfunctional,
uncertain of its work, in truth more a firm than a family. Diana tried to
serve. she tried to persevere. She tried to be dutiful. But in the end, she
would not obey.
This
disastrous turn of events nevertheless failed to dissipate popular fascination
with the British royals. Indeed, it intrigued the world even more. For was this
not to be expected of the line that had leavened history with domestic dramas
both delicious and dolorous? Henry VIII and his six wives; the rivalry of a
Virgin Queen and her all too lusty Scots cousin; the madness of George III and
the cupidity of his sons; Victoria and the brood she produced to rival the
Hapsburgs, marrying, marrying,marrying all over Europe.
Diana's
catastrophic dalliance with the Windsors reverberated with history. It seemed
as if the marriage and bitter divorce of Charles and Diana were inevitable
evolutionary steps in the centuries-long intercourse between the Spencers and
the Crown. For not only did the Spencers trace their descent from the same
kings the Windsors claimed as ancestors, but in the 17th century alone, four of
Diana's forebears were royal mistresses: Charles II was linked to three Spencer
women, his brother James II to one. In the 18th century, Georgiana Spencer, the
daughter of the first Earl of Spencer, scandalized the country not only with
her many infidelities but also with her affair with the Prince of Wales, who
may have been the father of one of her children. The same pathetic prince,
after being abandoned by Georgiana, would pursue her sister Henrietta, who
spurned him amid a comic seduction. In this century, a Prince of Wales again
paid court to a Diana forebear: Lady Cynthia Hamilton, who chose instead to
become the wife of the seventh Earl of Spencer and thus Diana's grandmother.
The prince eventually turned to the American divorcee Wallis Simpson — and had
to give up his throne for the woman he loved. What if Lady Cynthia had married
the prince? The more cogent question is: Should not her decision have served as
warning to her granddaughter to avoid a royal marriage?
History
and its omens hovered around the marriage of Charles and Diana like uninvited
guests bearing ill tidings. Tradition called for a wedding in Westminster
Abbey. But Charles did not want to marry in Westminster, preferring St. Paul's
Cathedral. He pointed out that a royal marriage had once been celebrated in the
old St. Paul's: in the 16th century, Arthur, Prince of Wales, had married his
Spanish bride Catherine there. It was an acceptable precedent — but an
unfortunate one. Arthur died before the marriage was consummated, and
Catherine, a prize because she was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of
Spain, was eventually wed to the new English heir, becoming the unhappy first
of Henry VIII's six wives.
As for
Diana, she wanted to avoid Westminster for reasons of personal history: her
parents were married there in 1954. At that wedding, the Bishop of Norwich told
the couple, "You are making an addition to the hoe life of your country on
which, above all others, our national life depends." It turned out to be a
blessing without efficacy. Indeed, the opposite was visited upon the Spencers.
Diana wanted no part of that unintended curse. And so Charles and Diana were
married in St. Paul's — in the end, a futile dodge.
The
personal history of Diana before the Windsors was, of course, a premonition of
the life of Diana the princess. In 1982, the year after the royal wedding, the
journalist Penny Junor was almost apologetic about writing the biography of a
20-year-old "who has spent 19 of those years in almost total
obscurity." What kind of life could possibly be told? And yet the details
she related then possess a fatalistic glow now, hinting at the troubled Diana
who would emerge over the next 15 years. While admiring of its subject, Junor's
book nevertheless draws attention to Diana's imperfect virtues. "Diana was
a compulsive washer," Junor wrote matter-of-factly, before cataloging how,
in boarding school, Diana would not let a day go by without bathing, no matter
how late it was, sneaking into the bathroom after lights were out even though
it was strictly forbidden by the school, which allowed the girls to shower only
three times a week. "She also had a compulsion for washing clothes" —
and did more washing than any other student at school When she had time to
visit her sisters, Diana would do their laundry too. After her marriage, she
would write to an ex-nanny saying, "I do get annoyed at not being able to
do my washing and general ironing." At nine years old, she was dusting the
nursery to keep a less than thorough nanny out of trouble when her father came
to check the room. Goodness may explain some of this fastidiousness. But only some.
After all, this girl became the woman who admitted to bulimia and a regular
program of colonic irrigation.
The child
Diana, like the adult princess, had a capacity for drama and a penchant to seek
comeuppance — locking a hated nanny in a room where she would not be discovered
till evening, throwing the underclothes of an au pair onto the roof of the
house and watching with glee as the items were rescued. She was an indifferent
student: she froze at exams, was terrible at French, even did badly at
needlework. But her limitations would serve her well. A penchant for popular
culture and romance novels cultivated what many would later praise as her
"common touch," her ability to talk to ordinary people about things
they cared about. In school she was recognized as a do-gooder and received
seldom-awarded prizes for helpfulness. As a teenager, she learned quickly that
loving children was not the same as being able to care for them. She took her
training as a kindergarten teacher very seriously.
She was
aware of how things failed to work — even things inspired by love. The
infidelities and disappointments that befell her family were proof enough. Her
mother lost custody of her children because the court saw fit to punish her for
adultery. Her father chose to marry a woman his children detested. Diana knew
what it was like to be six years old and unable to explain to her friends why
her mother was no longer around, how even her most courageous front could snap
in a fit of anger. She knew what it was to be caught crying in secret. But she
wanted to get family right. And when, one day, her prince came, she believed
she had her opportunity, risked all, stumbled into the very nightmare she had
sought to escape — and lost.
"Happy
families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
that declaration comes down to us from the magisterial heights of Tolstoy. But
it is a false one. The happy family is a protean myth, shifting shape with the
fashion of the times. The reality is that every unhappy family is alike. And,
alas, unhappy families abound, trapped in cycles of aspiration and
disappointment, of love and loss. The most augustly unhappy family in the world
thus becomes a spectacular mirror for us all.
That is
what is at the heart of our grief: simpler and yet more profound than a
fascination with splendor; cosmic and yet as close to us as our parents, our
brothers, our sisters, our children. In the ruins of Diana's life, we see the
shadows and anxieties of the lives we are trying to build together — as husbands,
as wives, as sons, as daughters. We shudder over our sorrow for Diana as if we
were caught in paroxysms of self-pity. In embarrassment, we deny. In truth, we
recognize.
Gerard
Manley Hopkins voiced the emotion perfectly:
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed ...
It is the plight we were born for. It is ourselves we mourn for.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed ...
It is the plight we were born for. It is ourselves we mourn for.
-------------
A Lesson in Loss
By
Anne-Marie O'Neill, Kim Hubbard- 1998
Joined by Tragedy and Sorrow, Family or
Fate, the People Whose Lives Were Forever Changed by the Death of Diana,
Princess of Wales, Move On
Her
glamour and style still captivate, her good works still bring comfort, her
smile—captured in endless news footage and on countless magazine covers—still
radiates. Is it any wonder that as the anniversary of the death of Princess
Diana approaches, it is so hard at times to believe she is really gone? More
than 2 billion people watched her funeral on TV, and Britain seemed paralyzed
with grief for a week following her death. But the investigation into the
horrific crash in Paris on Aug. 31 that claimed her life at 36 (as well as the
lives of Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul) has yet to provide answers.
Memorials—from the museum her brother Charles erected at Althorp to the shrine
soon to be unveiled at Harrods by Dodi's father, Mohamed—keep her legend alive.
Her legacy too endures: The press has become more considerate of the royals,
the Queen more caring of her subjects. But for those touched most personally by
her passing—her dashing young sons, her grieving ex-husband, the crash's sole
survivor—the loss is all too real. On the following pages, read how their lives
have changed.
PRINCE CHARLES
A doting father, he has helped his sons bear the loss of Diana
He has made something of a career out of his angst over architecture. He's also passionate about polo, not to mention his place in history as next in line to the British throne. But the role that now most defines Prince Charles is that of single parent. And, like most people new to that task, he has spent much of this year figuring out how to juggle professional duties and parental responsibilities.
Racked by grief after Diana's death, Charles immediately canceled most of his engagements to be with his boys. And as time went on, he arranged, when school holidays allowed, to have them join him. In November, 13-year-old Prince Harry was at Charles's side during an official trip to South Africa, where they were entertained by Zulu dancers and the Spice Girls. Then, over Easter break, both brothers tagged along on a royal visit to Vancouver, followed by a skiing vacation at Whistler, B.C.
"The prince has warmed to the task of being a single parent," says British Press Association royals correspondent Peter Archer. He has engaged in public displays of affection—exchanging a goodbye kiss with William on Aug. 4, for example, as they boarded separate planes for a vacation in Greece—and indulged in kid-friendly outings, such as a trip with Harry July 6 to see a London stage performance of Dr. Doolittle. He has even been heard poking fun at himself. Meeting Doolittle's cast, Charles quipped, "They say I talk to plants; now I'm talking to a Pushmi-Pullyu."
The prince has also taken steps to make a place for his longtime love Camilla Parker Bowles in his family life. He has had some help. Her introductory tea with Prince William, 16, at Charles's St. James's Palace apartments on June 12, leaked to the press as a chance encounter, was in fact orchestrated by William. (Harry's introduction, at Highgrove, took place a few weeks later.)
It's a scenario Diana might have foreseen. "She would be rather irritated that the boys have met Camilla, especially as they probably quite liked her," says Majesty editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward. Still, says a Palace insider, "at the end of her life, Diana was more resigned to Charles's private life and wished him well."
According to her wishes, Charles enrolled Harry at Eton, where he will reside in William's house. As for William, "Charles wants to introduce him to his royal role, albeit gently," says Archer. For now, Charles's main goal is to provide the emotional support his sons need to heal. "Charles and the boys," Archer says, "are a close family."
PRINCES WILLIAM and HARRY
Diana's sons find solace and joy in the Windsors' embrace
On Aug. 23, 15,000 were expected to follow part of the route, from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey, taken by Diana's casket last year. On Aug. 31, the anniversary of her death, the Spencers will gather for a private ceremony at Althorp. But Princes William and Harry will be vacationing at Balmoral, where they always go in late August, and where, it is hoped, the familiar surroundings will bring them comfort.
"Up there nothing changes," says author Brian Hoey. The boys' companion Tiggy Legge-Bourke, 33, will be on hand (though presumably not for sports outings after her recent blunder in allowing the princes to abseil—rappeling headfirst down a steep incline—without helmets) as will their cousins Zara, 17, and Peter Phillips, 20, Princess Anne's children. Days will be spent shooting, fishing or biking. There will be movies too. "They like to watch them after dinner," says Hoey. "If it's a war film, Prince Philip will tell what the filmmakers got wrong. He used to make William laugh out loud."
In fact, William and Harry (who turns 14 on Sept. 15) seem to be adapting with ease. "The boys are doing surprisingly well, partly because they're not being pulled in so many directions [now that Diana is gone]," says Majesty's Seward. That isn't to say they don't miss their mother. Bubbly Harry now often seems lost in thought. "He's the one showing the effects of his loss," says the British Press Association's Archer. "But William could be storing up problems for later."
Though reporters have kept a respectful distance since Diana's death, it didn't help that a birthday surprise the boys had planned for their dad—a specially written play by Stephen Fry, starring Emma Thompson and the young princes—was spoiled by a newspaper report of it. Still, as a future king, says Archer, William "must learn to live with the legitimate interest of his subjects."
QUEEN ELIZABETH
The Palace opens a window to the winds of change
She had suffered her share of setbacks in 1992, the year she called her annus horribilis. But the days immediately following Diana's death were among the bleakest for the Queen. The public's reaction to such gaffes as the family's retreating behind the doors of Balmoral and the Queen's refusal to break with protocol and fly a flag at half-mast—or at all—at Buckingham Palace in honor of the princess, even though the Queen wasn't in residence, was summed up by a headline in The Express: "Show Us You Care."
She got the message. On the eve of the funeral she addressed the nation live from Buckingham Palace. And within eight months the Queen, now 72, could be found on her first official foray ever to a pub (during a tour of Devon) and riding in a taxi (another first, to promote environmentally friendly liquefied petroleum fuel). Though some reforms—such as the disclosure of certain royal financial records—had been in the works for some time, "Diana's death provided the jolt that was needed," says the Queen's biographer Ben Pimlott. "She showed the way forward."
Indeed, last month the Queen even hinted that she had given up wearing fur except on her ceremonial robes. What's next: a nose ring?
Not likely (although body piercing has invaded the Palace: Princess Anne's daughter Zara is sporting a stud in her tongue). But there's no doubt that change is afoot in the hallowed House of Windsor. With the Queen's consent, Tony Blair's Labour government decommissioned the royal yacht Britannia, saving taxpayers some $12 million a year. Royal travel expenses became public, revealing, among other extravagances, the Queen's $17,600 trip aboard the royal train to 1997's Derby horse races. The Queen put up no resistance to the government's proposal to abolish primogeniture (an eldest son's right to precede an older sister to the throne). And, on her own initiative, the Queen pronounced an end to compulsory bowing and curtsying (though they're still appreciated).
Further fine-tuning of the Queen's image awaits the arrival of her new $368,000-a-year communications director, Simon Lewis, 39, who is due to start work in September. But the media are already impressed. "The Queen showed a new face to the nation," the Mail on Sunday editorialized after the monarch had chatted with rock singer Julie Thompson, 21, at a Buckingham Palace function in April. "She publicly embraced, for the first time, the generation that will decide the future of the House of Windsor and won it over."
Public opinion may be harder to sway. "We have become a lot less reverential and a lot less deferential," says royals author Brian Hoey. "People no longer believe royalty walks on water." But if they no longer rule the waves, the royals still serve a purpose. "The monarchy provides the social glue that binds people together," says Pimlott. And, as the headlines of the past year show, "people remain enormously interested in all things royal."
FRANCES SHAND KYDD
Her attempts to mend frayed family ties have failed
In another family it might have seemed a predictable way to spend a summer weekend. At the invitation of her former son-in-law Prince Charles, Diana's mother, Frances Shand Kydd, spent two days in July visiting with him and grandson Prince Harry (Prince William was off with friends) at Highgrove, Charles's country estate in Gloucestershire. The trio dined and chatted and took walks together in Charles's prized garden. "Charles is keen for Harry and William to see [Mrs. Shand Kydd]," says the British Press Association's Archer. "She is family, after all."
True, but lately Little Red Riding-Hood might have less trouble recognizing her grandmother. Tucked away in her modest, three-bedroom home on Scotland's Isle of Seil—where she will probably mark the anniversary of Diana's death quietly—Shand Kydd, 62, has seen little of the princes since riding on the train with them to their mother's burial at Althorp last September. And despite the friendly weekend—a royal nod toward Diana's wish that her mother be consulted in the boys' upbringing—that is not about to change. "The meeting was simply a gesture," says one insider. "The Spencers are treated with the same disregard as they always have been."
Displays of togetherness are just as rare among the Spencer clan. "Shand Kydd has tried to draw the family together," says Archer. "But there has not been any great show of unity." In fact the matriarch appears to have found as much comfort with commoners as with her own titled kin. In a recent documentary for FOX-TV, she told of mingling—unrecognized—with the crowds of mourners outside Kensington Palace after Diana's death. And when she is not busy hand-writing replies to the many thousands of sympathy letters she has since received, the Roman Catholic convert is occupied with works of charity, such as the trip to Lourdes that she chaperoned last April for a group of disabled children. "She thinks that the way to keep Diana's memory alive," says Majesty magazine's Seward, "is to keep on with her good work."
CHARLES SPENCER
The British public loses its taste for Champagne Charlie
In Britain the measure of a bounder can often be gauged by the number of his former lovers who have vented to the press. Earl Spencer, the man once known as Champagne Charlie, certainly has had his share. But Josie Borain, 35—the former Calvin Klein model who accompanied the earl to Diana's funeral and supported him through his messy divorce from wife Victoria before quietly dumping him in January—looked like a holdout. For a while.
"I found him calculating and manipulative," Borain finally blurted to the Mail on Sunday in July, adding that Spencer, 34, had cheated on her at least once and had had some 20 lovers during his marriage. "Generally," she said of their 10-month affair, "it was a bad investment, a waste of good-quality-loving time."
Harsh as that salvo was, it was just the latest in a year that saw the earl accused of all kinds of bad behavior, from disloyalty (for criticizing the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, of which his sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale is president, for not dispensing its monies with dispatch) to profiteering (by charging a $16 entry fee to the Diana museum he created at Althorp).
For his part, Spencer is "battered, but unbowed," by criticism of the Althorp memorial, he told his local newspaper The Northampton Chronicle. "If it was more subtle, it would be hard to deal with. But as it is, it is just ludicrous," he said of complaints such as those over the potential traffic snarls that could have accompanied the 152,000 pilgrims who visited in July and August. (No such problem arose.) "She was my sister after all... and if we are proud of what we are doing, then that is all we can achieve."
As for Spencer's golden moment at Diana's funeral, where he eulogized his sister eloquently while castigating the royal family, it is now at best a tarnished memory and at worst another excuse for a public flogging. "William and Harry did not appreciate it at all," says the British Press Association's Archer. "There was a relative—their uncle—criticizing their father, who is, after all, all they have left now."
Spencer has tried to continue Diana's legacy. Last month he took William abseiling. And in March he followed in Diana's footsteps to Cambodia to highlight the plight of victims of land mines. "He was horrified by what he saw," says Philip Dixon, chairman of the Cambodia Trust, which Diana had supported. "The corridors were full of beds of people in various degrees of disability."
If the experience changed him, then all the better, says former lover Chantal Callopy, 39, who supported her new friend Victoria Spencer through the acrimonious divorce in November. (In a settlement, Victoria got $3.2 million and her Capetown house; and she retained joint custody of children Kitty, 7, twins Eliza and Katya, 6, and Louis, 4, who will stay in Capetown, where Spencer also has a home.) "He has probably done a lot of soul-searching," Callopy says. "Maybe, with this charity work, he has found a niche."
Even Borain seems to have mellowed. "I have no animosity against Charles," she told PEOPLE. "He is not that bad a guy. He is just young and insecure like the rest of us."
LADY SARAH McCORQUODALE and LADY JANE FELLOWES
Keeping a sister's legacy alive and her boys in their hearts
Growing up, the Spencer girls were a study in contrasts: Sarah, the oldest, was the wildest of the bunch. Jane was considered quiet and dependable. Then came Diana, shy, pretty and eager to please the outgoing Sarah, whom she idolized from the start. "When Sarah returned home from West Heath School, Diana was a willing servant," Andrew Morton wrote in Diana: Her True Story, "unpacking her suitcases, running her bath, tidying her room."
Ironically, by the end of Diana's marriage, McCorquodale, now 43, had become her unofficial lady-in-waiting. "I think Sarah knew about Diana's affairs," says royals author Judy Wade. "In a way she even encouraged Diana to be wild and to have lovers." Meanwhile, Jane, 41, grew more distant from Di because of her own marriage—and loyalty—to Sir Robert Fellowes, who became the Queen's private secretary in 1990. Now, a year after Diana's death, the two sisters find themselves again in contrasting states: one thrust reluctantly into the public domain and the other constricted by her own grief.
Diana may have called her "the only person I know I can trust," but McCorquodale has had less success in winning the confidence of the British public. As president of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, she has borne the brunt of criticism that the fund has been slow to hand out its $132.8 million to charities and has accepted endorsement deals of questionable taste, associating Diana's memory with lottery tickets and margarine. (In March the fund dispensed its first $12.8 million to eight of Diana's favorite causes, and an additional $8 million is currently being distributed.) But a warmer reception may greet McCorquodale across the Atlantic. In the fall the fund will open an office in New York City. A town that saw a 300 percent jump in the number of newborns named Diana last fall is unlikely to balk at Princess of Wales keepsakes.
Yet the strain is beginning to show. "Sarah looks more tired, more drawn," says a royal watcher. "She has aged." Her three-hour commute twice a week from Lincolnshire—where she lives with her husband, Neil, a farmer, and their three children—to the fund's London office can't help. As for Fellowes, also the mother of three, her emotional state prevents her from pitching in. Still mourning deeply for Diana, who died before they could resolve the-strain between them, Fellowes has kept a low profile.
The sisters are like-minded on one subject: making time for Di's boys. They've attended Harry's Ludgrove soccer games and visited William at Eton. And though the boys' summer schedule has left little time for their aunts (they turned down an invitation to vacation with them and their cousins in Cornwall in August), the sisters are there for their nephews, says the British Press Association's Archer, "at a time when they need friendship and support."
PAUL BURRELL
Suddenly in the limelight, the former butler gets some heat
Diana called him "my rock," and onetime butler and confidant Paul Burrell, 40, continues to have to live up to the title. "Criticism makes him more resilient," says a friend of the man who was the only nonfamily member graveside at Diana's burial. Since then he has been appointed events and fund-raising manager for the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund (salary: $45,000) and also serves on the government's Memorial Committee, charged with creating a series of Diana commemoratives, including a £5 coin. Both jobs have brought controversy. In July newspaper columnists and locals took Burrell to task for his support of a scheme to build a $16 million memorial garden at Kensington Palace, which the art critic Brian Sewell publicly decried as nothing but "a focus for idiot tourists."
More difficult for Burrell, though, was overseeing the dismantling of Diana's 10-room Kensington Palace apartment in the months after her death and the dispersal of her possessions (furnishings and clothes went to Althorp, while her sons had their pick of her photos and beloved stuffed animals). According to an insider the space will remain empty "until the foreseeable future."
Burrell too has been uprooted. Last month he moved out of the three-bedroom apartment he and his wife, Maria, 42, and sons Alexander, 13, and Nicky, 10, occupied at the palace and into a converted barn in Farndon, Cheshire. "Paul is the last thread of the princess at Kensington," says an intimate of the still fiercely loyal Burrell. "The memories he has he will carry until he dies."
TREVOR REES-JONES
In his quest for privacy, the crash's only survivor goes home
As glamour goes, it's a world away from the Paris Ritz. That's just what Trevor Rees-Jones, 30, had in mind when he quit his desk job at Harrods in April to return to his hometown of Oswestry (pop. 15,000), 200 miles northwest of London. The former paratrooper, who spent last summer watching over his boss's playboy son Dodi Fayed on his travels with Princess Diana, now sells sneakers part-time at a sports store within walking distance of the two-bedroom cottage where he lives alone. (Estranged wife Susan, reported The Sunday Mirror, now lives with another man in the home she once shared with Rees-Jones.)
Meanwhile, twice-weekly physiotherapy sessions, to repair an injury to his left arm that he suffered in the crash, have paid off. Health wise, "he is coming along well," says a pal. He has also developed a friendship with his physiotherapist Helen Calaghan, 27. But Rees-Jones won't know if—and whom—he can sue for damages until fall, when the Paris judge investigating the crash issues his findings. Until then, says Rees-Jones's lawyer Ian Lucas, "it is difficult for him to move forward with his life."
CAMILLA PARKER BOWLES
Diana's longtime rival is using the front door again
You've got to hand it to her: Over the past six years, Parker Bowles has been condemned, resurrected and buried again. Yet she has come through it all with her humor intact, even using—prior to the tragedy in Paris—Diana's epithet on herself by answering the phone in her Wiltshire home, "Rottweiler here." Friends aren't surprised. "Camilla is very good at laughing at herself," says author Jilly Cooper. "That's what has saved her through the appalling mauling she has had."
Nor has she ever been anything but discreet. After news of her private June 12 meeting with Prince William at St. James's Palace appeared in newspapers last month, Parker Bowles was quick to accept the resignation of part-time aide Amanda MacManus, who confessed to inadvertently leaking the story in pillow talk with her husband, a Times newspaper executive. (He then mentioned it to a pal in New Zealand, who in turn passed it on to his tennis partner, The Sun's chief reporter, John Kay.)
Parker Bowles's patience began to pay off in the weeks before Diana's death. On July 18, 1997, she and Charles appeared together openly—though privately—at the 50th-birth-day party he threw for her at High-grove. "Having been the most vilified person in the country, Camilla had just about crawled out of the bunker," says her biographer Christopher Wilson. Even Diana had backed off. "She had to accept the relationship," says Majesty's Seward, "because it wasn't doing her any good being obsessive about it."
Diana's death, however, "was bad news for Camilla," adds Seward. "All the love that had been directed toward Diana could easily be directed in hatred toward her." After lying low for months afterward, Parker Bowles is testing the waters once more. How the public responds will be clear when she and Charles appear publicly as a couple. (Bets are on the Oct. 29 wedding of Santa Palmer-Tomkinson, the daughter of Charles's close friends Charles and Patty, to Simon Sebag-Montefiore.) Meanwhile, Parker Bowles appears to have won the acceptance of those who matter most. At their father's birthday play on July 31, William and Harry sat her in a place of honor, next to Charles. "They don't see her as a villain," says author Wade. "She too has had a rough time."
FREDERIC MAILLIEZ
The first doctor at the crash site refuses to scapegoat the paparazzi
Frederic Mailliez crosses Paris's Alma Bridge nearly every day on his way to work and marvels at the crowds gathered at the site, now an unofficial memorial to Princess Diana, who was fatally injured in the tunnel below. "I'm amazed people were so affected by her death that they still come to that spot," he says.
Mailliez, 37, has reason to be more affected than most. A physician specializing in emergency care who works for SOS Médecins, a private 24-hour house-call service, he was off-duty, driving home, when he came upon the crash moments after it happened. Sizing up the situation—two dead, two seriously injured—he rushed to his car to phone for assistance, grabbed a handheld respirator and ran back to help the princess, while a volunteer fireman who happened by tended to bodyguard Rees-Jones until ambulances arrived minutes later. It wasn't until the next morning that Mailliez learned his patient's identity. "I was surprised," he says. "People surrounded the car; some had cameras, but they never got in my way." In fact, the only obstacle was his lack of equipment. "It was frustrating to be there with almost nothing but my bare hands," he says. "I couldn't even take her blood pressure."
Yet he has the comfort of knowing he did his best—and he believes-the others who treated the victims did too. Might Diana have lived if she had reached the hospital sooner? "It's impossible to say," Mailliez says. "I have spoken to emergency and thoracic-surgery experts who don't believe they could have saved her." As for the paparazzi, all nine of whom are still under investigation for manslaughter and non-assistance to accident victims, he says, "I have nothing to reproach them for."
Mailliez, who has testified three times about the crash, will do so again in September. Still, for all the attention, he insists, "this experience has not changed me. The only contribution I have to make is to tell the truth. I feel I'm the guardian of a part of Princess Diana's memory."
Anne-Marie O'Neill and Kim Hubbard
Simon Perry and Nina Biddle in London and Cathy Nolan in Paris
PRINCE CHARLES
A doting father, he has helped his sons bear the loss of Diana
He has made something of a career out of his angst over architecture. He's also passionate about polo, not to mention his place in history as next in line to the British throne. But the role that now most defines Prince Charles is that of single parent. And, like most people new to that task, he has spent much of this year figuring out how to juggle professional duties and parental responsibilities.
Racked by grief after Diana's death, Charles immediately canceled most of his engagements to be with his boys. And as time went on, he arranged, when school holidays allowed, to have them join him. In November, 13-year-old Prince Harry was at Charles's side during an official trip to South Africa, where they were entertained by Zulu dancers and the Spice Girls. Then, over Easter break, both brothers tagged along on a royal visit to Vancouver, followed by a skiing vacation at Whistler, B.C.
"The prince has warmed to the task of being a single parent," says British Press Association royals correspondent Peter Archer. He has engaged in public displays of affection—exchanging a goodbye kiss with William on Aug. 4, for example, as they boarded separate planes for a vacation in Greece—and indulged in kid-friendly outings, such as a trip with Harry July 6 to see a London stage performance of Dr. Doolittle. He has even been heard poking fun at himself. Meeting Doolittle's cast, Charles quipped, "They say I talk to plants; now I'm talking to a Pushmi-Pullyu."
The prince has also taken steps to make a place for his longtime love Camilla Parker Bowles in his family life. He has had some help. Her introductory tea with Prince William, 16, at Charles's St. James's Palace apartments on June 12, leaked to the press as a chance encounter, was in fact orchestrated by William. (Harry's introduction, at Highgrove, took place a few weeks later.)
It's a scenario Diana might have foreseen. "She would be rather irritated that the boys have met Camilla, especially as they probably quite liked her," says Majesty editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward. Still, says a Palace insider, "at the end of her life, Diana was more resigned to Charles's private life and wished him well."
According to her wishes, Charles enrolled Harry at Eton, where he will reside in William's house. As for William, "Charles wants to introduce him to his royal role, albeit gently," says Archer. For now, Charles's main goal is to provide the emotional support his sons need to heal. "Charles and the boys," Archer says, "are a close family."
PRINCES WILLIAM and HARRY
Diana's sons find solace and joy in the Windsors' embrace
On Aug. 23, 15,000 were expected to follow part of the route, from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey, taken by Diana's casket last year. On Aug. 31, the anniversary of her death, the Spencers will gather for a private ceremony at Althorp. But Princes William and Harry will be vacationing at Balmoral, where they always go in late August, and where, it is hoped, the familiar surroundings will bring them comfort.
"Up there nothing changes," says author Brian Hoey. The boys' companion Tiggy Legge-Bourke, 33, will be on hand (though presumably not for sports outings after her recent blunder in allowing the princes to abseil—rappeling headfirst down a steep incline—without helmets) as will their cousins Zara, 17, and Peter Phillips, 20, Princess Anne's children. Days will be spent shooting, fishing or biking. There will be movies too. "They like to watch them after dinner," says Hoey. "If it's a war film, Prince Philip will tell what the filmmakers got wrong. He used to make William laugh out loud."
In fact, William and Harry (who turns 14 on Sept. 15) seem to be adapting with ease. "The boys are doing surprisingly well, partly because they're not being pulled in so many directions [now that Diana is gone]," says Majesty's Seward. That isn't to say they don't miss their mother. Bubbly Harry now often seems lost in thought. "He's the one showing the effects of his loss," says the British Press Association's Archer. "But William could be storing up problems for later."
Though reporters have kept a respectful distance since Diana's death, it didn't help that a birthday surprise the boys had planned for their dad—a specially written play by Stephen Fry, starring Emma Thompson and the young princes—was spoiled by a newspaper report of it. Still, as a future king, says Archer, William "must learn to live with the legitimate interest of his subjects."
QUEEN ELIZABETH
The Palace opens a window to the winds of change
She had suffered her share of setbacks in 1992, the year she called her annus horribilis. But the days immediately following Diana's death were among the bleakest for the Queen. The public's reaction to such gaffes as the family's retreating behind the doors of Balmoral and the Queen's refusal to break with protocol and fly a flag at half-mast—or at all—at Buckingham Palace in honor of the princess, even though the Queen wasn't in residence, was summed up by a headline in The Express: "Show Us You Care."
She got the message. On the eve of the funeral she addressed the nation live from Buckingham Palace. And within eight months the Queen, now 72, could be found on her first official foray ever to a pub (during a tour of Devon) and riding in a taxi (another first, to promote environmentally friendly liquefied petroleum fuel). Though some reforms—such as the disclosure of certain royal financial records—had been in the works for some time, "Diana's death provided the jolt that was needed," says the Queen's biographer Ben Pimlott. "She showed the way forward."
Indeed, last month the Queen even hinted that she had given up wearing fur except on her ceremonial robes. What's next: a nose ring?
Not likely (although body piercing has invaded the Palace: Princess Anne's daughter Zara is sporting a stud in her tongue). But there's no doubt that change is afoot in the hallowed House of Windsor. With the Queen's consent, Tony Blair's Labour government decommissioned the royal yacht Britannia, saving taxpayers some $12 million a year. Royal travel expenses became public, revealing, among other extravagances, the Queen's $17,600 trip aboard the royal train to 1997's Derby horse races. The Queen put up no resistance to the government's proposal to abolish primogeniture (an eldest son's right to precede an older sister to the throne). And, on her own initiative, the Queen pronounced an end to compulsory bowing and curtsying (though they're still appreciated).
Further fine-tuning of the Queen's image awaits the arrival of her new $368,000-a-year communications director, Simon Lewis, 39, who is due to start work in September. But the media are already impressed. "The Queen showed a new face to the nation," the Mail on Sunday editorialized after the monarch had chatted with rock singer Julie Thompson, 21, at a Buckingham Palace function in April. "She publicly embraced, for the first time, the generation that will decide the future of the House of Windsor and won it over."
Public opinion may be harder to sway. "We have become a lot less reverential and a lot less deferential," says royals author Brian Hoey. "People no longer believe royalty walks on water." But if they no longer rule the waves, the royals still serve a purpose. "The monarchy provides the social glue that binds people together," says Pimlott. And, as the headlines of the past year show, "people remain enormously interested in all things royal."
FRANCES SHAND KYDD
Her attempts to mend frayed family ties have failed
In another family it might have seemed a predictable way to spend a summer weekend. At the invitation of her former son-in-law Prince Charles, Diana's mother, Frances Shand Kydd, spent two days in July visiting with him and grandson Prince Harry (Prince William was off with friends) at Highgrove, Charles's country estate in Gloucestershire. The trio dined and chatted and took walks together in Charles's prized garden. "Charles is keen for Harry and William to see [Mrs. Shand Kydd]," says the British Press Association's Archer. "She is family, after all."
True, but lately Little Red Riding-Hood might have less trouble recognizing her grandmother. Tucked away in her modest, three-bedroom home on Scotland's Isle of Seil—where she will probably mark the anniversary of Diana's death quietly—Shand Kydd, 62, has seen little of the princes since riding on the train with them to their mother's burial at Althorp last September. And despite the friendly weekend—a royal nod toward Diana's wish that her mother be consulted in the boys' upbringing—that is not about to change. "The meeting was simply a gesture," says one insider. "The Spencers are treated with the same disregard as they always have been."
Displays of togetherness are just as rare among the Spencer clan. "Shand Kydd has tried to draw the family together," says Archer. "But there has not been any great show of unity." In fact the matriarch appears to have found as much comfort with commoners as with her own titled kin. In a recent documentary for FOX-TV, she told of mingling—unrecognized—with the crowds of mourners outside Kensington Palace after Diana's death. And when she is not busy hand-writing replies to the many thousands of sympathy letters she has since received, the Roman Catholic convert is occupied with works of charity, such as the trip to Lourdes that she chaperoned last April for a group of disabled children. "She thinks that the way to keep Diana's memory alive," says Majesty magazine's Seward, "is to keep on with her good work."
CHARLES SPENCER
The British public loses its taste for Champagne Charlie
In Britain the measure of a bounder can often be gauged by the number of his former lovers who have vented to the press. Earl Spencer, the man once known as Champagne Charlie, certainly has had his share. But Josie Borain, 35—the former Calvin Klein model who accompanied the earl to Diana's funeral and supported him through his messy divorce from wife Victoria before quietly dumping him in January—looked like a holdout. For a while.
"I found him calculating and manipulative," Borain finally blurted to the Mail on Sunday in July, adding that Spencer, 34, had cheated on her at least once and had had some 20 lovers during his marriage. "Generally," she said of their 10-month affair, "it was a bad investment, a waste of good-quality-loving time."
Harsh as that salvo was, it was just the latest in a year that saw the earl accused of all kinds of bad behavior, from disloyalty (for criticizing the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, of which his sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale is president, for not dispensing its monies with dispatch) to profiteering (by charging a $16 entry fee to the Diana museum he created at Althorp).
For his part, Spencer is "battered, but unbowed," by criticism of the Althorp memorial, he told his local newspaper The Northampton Chronicle. "If it was more subtle, it would be hard to deal with. But as it is, it is just ludicrous," he said of complaints such as those over the potential traffic snarls that could have accompanied the 152,000 pilgrims who visited in July and August. (No such problem arose.) "She was my sister after all... and if we are proud of what we are doing, then that is all we can achieve."
As for Spencer's golden moment at Diana's funeral, where he eulogized his sister eloquently while castigating the royal family, it is now at best a tarnished memory and at worst another excuse for a public flogging. "William and Harry did not appreciate it at all," says the British Press Association's Archer. "There was a relative—their uncle—criticizing their father, who is, after all, all they have left now."
Spencer has tried to continue Diana's legacy. Last month he took William abseiling. And in March he followed in Diana's footsteps to Cambodia to highlight the plight of victims of land mines. "He was horrified by what he saw," says Philip Dixon, chairman of the Cambodia Trust, which Diana had supported. "The corridors were full of beds of people in various degrees of disability."
If the experience changed him, then all the better, says former lover Chantal Callopy, 39, who supported her new friend Victoria Spencer through the acrimonious divorce in November. (In a settlement, Victoria got $3.2 million and her Capetown house; and she retained joint custody of children Kitty, 7, twins Eliza and Katya, 6, and Louis, 4, who will stay in Capetown, where Spencer also has a home.) "He has probably done a lot of soul-searching," Callopy says. "Maybe, with this charity work, he has found a niche."
Even Borain seems to have mellowed. "I have no animosity against Charles," she told PEOPLE. "He is not that bad a guy. He is just young and insecure like the rest of us."
LADY SARAH McCORQUODALE and LADY JANE FELLOWES
Keeping a sister's legacy alive and her boys in their hearts
Growing up, the Spencer girls were a study in contrasts: Sarah, the oldest, was the wildest of the bunch. Jane was considered quiet and dependable. Then came Diana, shy, pretty and eager to please the outgoing Sarah, whom she idolized from the start. "When Sarah returned home from West Heath School, Diana was a willing servant," Andrew Morton wrote in Diana: Her True Story, "unpacking her suitcases, running her bath, tidying her room."
Ironically, by the end of Diana's marriage, McCorquodale, now 43, had become her unofficial lady-in-waiting. "I think Sarah knew about Diana's affairs," says royals author Judy Wade. "In a way she even encouraged Diana to be wild and to have lovers." Meanwhile, Jane, 41, grew more distant from Di because of her own marriage—and loyalty—to Sir Robert Fellowes, who became the Queen's private secretary in 1990. Now, a year after Diana's death, the two sisters find themselves again in contrasting states: one thrust reluctantly into the public domain and the other constricted by her own grief.
Diana may have called her "the only person I know I can trust," but McCorquodale has had less success in winning the confidence of the British public. As president of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, she has borne the brunt of criticism that the fund has been slow to hand out its $132.8 million to charities and has accepted endorsement deals of questionable taste, associating Diana's memory with lottery tickets and margarine. (In March the fund dispensed its first $12.8 million to eight of Diana's favorite causes, and an additional $8 million is currently being distributed.) But a warmer reception may greet McCorquodale across the Atlantic. In the fall the fund will open an office in New York City. A town that saw a 300 percent jump in the number of newborns named Diana last fall is unlikely to balk at Princess of Wales keepsakes.
Yet the strain is beginning to show. "Sarah looks more tired, more drawn," says a royal watcher. "She has aged." Her three-hour commute twice a week from Lincolnshire—where she lives with her husband, Neil, a farmer, and their three children—to the fund's London office can't help. As for Fellowes, also the mother of three, her emotional state prevents her from pitching in. Still mourning deeply for Diana, who died before they could resolve the-strain between them, Fellowes has kept a low profile.
The sisters are like-minded on one subject: making time for Di's boys. They've attended Harry's Ludgrove soccer games and visited William at Eton. And though the boys' summer schedule has left little time for their aunts (they turned down an invitation to vacation with them and their cousins in Cornwall in August), the sisters are there for their nephews, says the British Press Association's Archer, "at a time when they need friendship and support."
PAUL BURRELL
Suddenly in the limelight, the former butler gets some heat
Diana called him "my rock," and onetime butler and confidant Paul Burrell, 40, continues to have to live up to the title. "Criticism makes him more resilient," says a friend of the man who was the only nonfamily member graveside at Diana's burial. Since then he has been appointed events and fund-raising manager for the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund (salary: $45,000) and also serves on the government's Memorial Committee, charged with creating a series of Diana commemoratives, including a £5 coin. Both jobs have brought controversy. In July newspaper columnists and locals took Burrell to task for his support of a scheme to build a $16 million memorial garden at Kensington Palace, which the art critic Brian Sewell publicly decried as nothing but "a focus for idiot tourists."
More difficult for Burrell, though, was overseeing the dismantling of Diana's 10-room Kensington Palace apartment in the months after her death and the dispersal of her possessions (furnishings and clothes went to Althorp, while her sons had their pick of her photos and beloved stuffed animals). According to an insider the space will remain empty "until the foreseeable future."
Burrell too has been uprooted. Last month he moved out of the three-bedroom apartment he and his wife, Maria, 42, and sons Alexander, 13, and Nicky, 10, occupied at the palace and into a converted barn in Farndon, Cheshire. "Paul is the last thread of the princess at Kensington," says an intimate of the still fiercely loyal Burrell. "The memories he has he will carry until he dies."
TREVOR REES-JONES
In his quest for privacy, the crash's only survivor goes home
As glamour goes, it's a world away from the Paris Ritz. That's just what Trevor Rees-Jones, 30, had in mind when he quit his desk job at Harrods in April to return to his hometown of Oswestry (pop. 15,000), 200 miles northwest of London. The former paratrooper, who spent last summer watching over his boss's playboy son Dodi Fayed on his travels with Princess Diana, now sells sneakers part-time at a sports store within walking distance of the two-bedroom cottage where he lives alone. (Estranged wife Susan, reported The Sunday Mirror, now lives with another man in the home she once shared with Rees-Jones.)
Meanwhile, twice-weekly physiotherapy sessions, to repair an injury to his left arm that he suffered in the crash, have paid off. Health wise, "he is coming along well," says a pal. He has also developed a friendship with his physiotherapist Helen Calaghan, 27. But Rees-Jones won't know if—and whom—he can sue for damages until fall, when the Paris judge investigating the crash issues his findings. Until then, says Rees-Jones's lawyer Ian Lucas, "it is difficult for him to move forward with his life."
CAMILLA PARKER BOWLES
Diana's longtime rival is using the front door again
You've got to hand it to her: Over the past six years, Parker Bowles has been condemned, resurrected and buried again. Yet she has come through it all with her humor intact, even using—prior to the tragedy in Paris—Diana's epithet on herself by answering the phone in her Wiltshire home, "Rottweiler here." Friends aren't surprised. "Camilla is very good at laughing at herself," says author Jilly Cooper. "That's what has saved her through the appalling mauling she has had."
Nor has she ever been anything but discreet. After news of her private June 12 meeting with Prince William at St. James's Palace appeared in newspapers last month, Parker Bowles was quick to accept the resignation of part-time aide Amanda MacManus, who confessed to inadvertently leaking the story in pillow talk with her husband, a Times newspaper executive. (He then mentioned it to a pal in New Zealand, who in turn passed it on to his tennis partner, The Sun's chief reporter, John Kay.)
Parker Bowles's patience began to pay off in the weeks before Diana's death. On July 18, 1997, she and Charles appeared together openly—though privately—at the 50th-birth-day party he threw for her at High-grove. "Having been the most vilified person in the country, Camilla had just about crawled out of the bunker," says her biographer Christopher Wilson. Even Diana had backed off. "She had to accept the relationship," says Majesty's Seward, "because it wasn't doing her any good being obsessive about it."
Diana's death, however, "was bad news for Camilla," adds Seward. "All the love that had been directed toward Diana could easily be directed in hatred toward her." After lying low for months afterward, Parker Bowles is testing the waters once more. How the public responds will be clear when she and Charles appear publicly as a couple. (Bets are on the Oct. 29 wedding of Santa Palmer-Tomkinson, the daughter of Charles's close friends Charles and Patty, to Simon Sebag-Montefiore.) Meanwhile, Parker Bowles appears to have won the acceptance of those who matter most. At their father's birthday play on July 31, William and Harry sat her in a place of honor, next to Charles. "They don't see her as a villain," says author Wade. "She too has had a rough time."
FREDERIC MAILLIEZ
The first doctor at the crash site refuses to scapegoat the paparazzi
Frederic Mailliez crosses Paris's Alma Bridge nearly every day on his way to work and marvels at the crowds gathered at the site, now an unofficial memorial to Princess Diana, who was fatally injured in the tunnel below. "I'm amazed people were so affected by her death that they still come to that spot," he says.
Mailliez, 37, has reason to be more affected than most. A physician specializing in emergency care who works for SOS Médecins, a private 24-hour house-call service, he was off-duty, driving home, when he came upon the crash moments after it happened. Sizing up the situation—two dead, two seriously injured—he rushed to his car to phone for assistance, grabbed a handheld respirator and ran back to help the princess, while a volunteer fireman who happened by tended to bodyguard Rees-Jones until ambulances arrived minutes later. It wasn't until the next morning that Mailliez learned his patient's identity. "I was surprised," he says. "People surrounded the car; some had cameras, but they never got in my way." In fact, the only obstacle was his lack of equipment. "It was frustrating to be there with almost nothing but my bare hands," he says. "I couldn't even take her blood pressure."
Yet he has the comfort of knowing he did his best—and he believes-the others who treated the victims did too. Might Diana have lived if she had reached the hospital sooner? "It's impossible to say," Mailliez says. "I have spoken to emergency and thoracic-surgery experts who don't believe they could have saved her." As for the paparazzi, all nine of whom are still under investigation for manslaughter and non-assistance to accident victims, he says, "I have nothing to reproach them for."
Mailliez, who has testified three times about the crash, will do so again in September. Still, for all the attention, he insists, "this experience has not changed me. The only contribution I have to make is to tell the truth. I feel I'm the guardian of a part of Princess Diana's memory."
Anne-Marie O'Neill and Kim Hubbard
Simon Perry and Nina Biddle in London and Cathy Nolan in Paris
·
Contributors:
·
Simon
Perry,
·
Nina
Biddle,
·
Cathy
Nolan.
---------------
www.calgaryherald.com/gallery+princess+diana...years...death/.../story.html30 Aug 2011 ... Princess
Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997. .... In Nova Scotia,
a
judge regretfully imposes a publication ban on the name of a dead ... Calgarians
mourn passing of local philanthropist, influential architect and ...
judge regretfully imposes a publication ban on the name of a dead ... Calgarians
mourn passing of local philanthropist, influential architect and ...
------------
Princess Diana:
Looking Back on the 15th Anniversary of her Death
By Nick
Carbone @nickcarboneAug. 31, 20120
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· 
- &&Jayne
Fincher / Getty Images
·Diana, The Princess of Wales,
wearing a beaded Catherine Walker gown and matching bolero, attending the
British Fashion Awards at the Albert Hall in London in 1989.
·
Email
·
Print
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Share
·
Comment
·Follow @TIMENewsfeed
·Princess Diana captivated and
intrigued the world like few other royals have. Her grace and her
Cinderella-like rise had a fairy-tale charm to it: she was the ordinary girl
who became a princess. And even amid the turmoil of her unraveling marriage
to Prince
Charles, which ended in divorce after 15 years, she managed to
enthrall us with her style and philanthropy.
·Sadly it was our fascination with
her that brought about her tragic death at the age of 36, in a fatal car crash
while being chased by paparazzi through a Paris tunnel. On August 31, 1997,
just after news of the accident began flooding the airwaves, TIME had just 16
hours to get the news into the next issue. A round-the-clock editorial team put
together a 20-page section devoted to the fallen Princess.http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/diana1.jpg
http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/diana1.jpg
TIME’s cover story painted the tragic scene for readers still coming to grips with the horrifying carnage.
http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/diana1.jpgTIME’s cover story painted the tragic scene for readers still coming to grips with the horrifying carnage.
·“With her go the hopes of a world
that had turned her life into part of its own projected biography, a fragile
hope for a happy-ever-after even in the face of adversity. To many, her
struggles blended into the hobbling steps of this 20th century as it limped
toward some vague promise of millennium.”
Essays
from across the world reflected on the people’s princess and how her star would
continue to shine, even amid tragedy.
“It
takes nothing but fate to be born a princess; how much harder it is to become
one.”
The
next week, a commemorative issue celebrated her life and legacy in many more
words. A letter from TIME’s editor explained Diana had
been seen between the magazine’s red borders eight times (nine times, now),
more than any other royal, including Queen Elizabeth. Before 1997 came to a
close, she would grace the cover three times in a single year. http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/diana2.jpg
http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/diana2.jpg
http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/diana2.jpg
We saw
a bit of Diana in Kate Middleton’s rise to stardom, both women who
ascended to the royalty. And Diana’s memory was invoked throughout the Royal
Wedding proceedings, her blue sapphire engagement ring shining brightly on her
son’s bride’s finger. “It’s my way of making sure my mother didn’t miss out,” Prince
William said.
In
honor of her 50th birthday in 2011, TIME focused in on 50 rare images of the Princess of Wales,
delivering a touching snapshot of Diana as she grew from child to budding
princess to mother and philanthropist.
And
even 15 years after her death, Princess Di continues to be recognized for her
societal contributions. She was named one of our 100 fashion icons of all-TIME.
“[W]hile
she popularized many of the over-the-top trends of the day — including bright
floral prints, polka dots and voluminous sleeves — she did so with restraint.
Diana wore the clothes, but they never wore Diana.”
Her
fashion was timeless and classic, much like her story. Diana’s legacy is surely
the stuff future fairy tales will be made of.
-------------
The
most marked example was the 1997 death of Princess Diana.
Thousands
of people spent the first 48 hours after news of the Paris car crash sobbing in
disbelief. Tens of thousands lined streets in London as the horse-drawn
carriage bearing the Princess of Wales' body made its way to Westminster Abbey.
It
built to a frenzy as television channels around the world played non-stop
images and footage of the princess. People said they cried more for Diana than
they their parents.
This
year, the sudden death of Robin Williams drew grief from fans and, in the age
of Facebook, people around the world posted online tributes to the comedian.
The death of 81-year-old comedian and Fashion Police host Joan Rivers drew a
similar response and, before that, Michael Jackson's death in 2009 created a
frenzy of public mourning.
Val
Leveson, of Auckland's Grief Centre, says the fact that people have not met the
person they are mourning does not matter. "It's almost as if they know the
person because he or she has had such a public life."
-------------
Sunday, July 18,
2010
Princess
Diana's Death/Funeral
My household is rarely silent. But as my horror-stricken family watched
the televised footage of Princess Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997, there were no words left to be
said. Though I was only five years old at the time, memories of that somber day
and all the various events and media coverage leading up to it will always be
seared into my brain. Being so young, I was completely unfamiliar with the
concept of death, let alone funerals and eulogies. Sinking in the corner of my
living room sofa, I remember trying to grasp some sort of understanding for the
terrible tragedy unfolding before me on my television screen.
It was strange to me that things that seemed so familiar
to me had begun taking on a new meaning. Welsh Guards, whom I had only seen in
my cartoons and sitcoms treated as slapstick fodder, were suddenly transformed
into solemn soldiers showing the ultimate display of patriotism by carrying the
coffin holding their nation’s beloved princess. “Candle In The Wind”, an
extremely overplayed song in my car, lost its mundane and annoying qualities
and suddenly became a touching tribute to someone who clearly lived a life that
was misunderstood by many. Thinking back now, it’s fascinating that media plays
such a defining role in not only shaping our meaning of what we encounter in
the world but changing
our perceptions as well, on intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group levels.
However, I also remember the media coverage of Princess
Diana’s death providing a negative influence as well. I was too young to
completely understand it all but I remember the slew of tabloid headlines and
jarring statements that started spreading following her death. Conspiracy
theories and accusations of assassination plots were being discussed
everywhere, it seemed, even among the more reputable news sources like CNN.
Even amongst the all the devastation her death brought, media outlets was not
only reporting it but utilizing and exploiting it for their own means.
Looking back now, I see Princess Diana’s death as a
prime example of both the positive and negative aspects of being defined by a
dominant culture and how the media facilitates such a process. Even though the
media was responsible for bringing about many false claims about her personal
life during a time that those closest to her would have wanted to mourn
privately and peacefully, such intense celebrity scrutiny has become an
inevitable part of mainstream culture. From another perspective, the endless attention
given to her actions also raised awareness in a positive way—for instance the
charities she was involved with were highlighted by the media because of their
connection to her. No matter what scandalous claims were made following her
death, it is clear that Princess Diana is still seen as an adored icon today,
not only in the U.K but throughout the whole world, illustrating the unifying
effect of media.
In a sense, I suppose it’s strange that my first
experience with death was one that was simultaneously shared with 2.5 billion
other people in the world. As discussed in Chapter 1 of “Mass Communication: Living
in a Media World”, the power of media to rapidly spread information and news is
vital in assuring that a certain event or person will leave a lasting cultural
impact on our world. But inevitably, death, especially under such tragic
circumstances, and the meaning we choose to take away from it, is something all
humans must undergo. It is something that serves to stretch across and unite
all cultures, to create and represent “our collective experience” as Baran
remarks in “What Is Culture?”. Therefore, it is not surprising that such a
shared emotional response is often perpetuated through the equally interactive
mediums that mass media provides.
COMMENT:
I
completely agree with you that coverage of Princess Diana's death showed both
the negative and positive sides of the Media. I remember watching the news with
my family. We were all so sad but the coverage allowed the world to grieve
together. Without television we would have never been able to participate in
her funeral and have the chance to honor her memory. But on the other side of
that it seemed that the media also went too far and stripped her and her family
of privacy. There was no balance and lines were crossed when this tragedy
turned into tabloid fodder.
COMMENT:
This is a
great example of the effects of the media in our lives.The medium, in this case
the television, is very important as it was showing the details of the funeral
with sounds and images makes us feel like we were attending the event. Also
because it was internationally broadcasted, this allowed millions of people who
could not afford to be present at the funeral to watch it live and feel the
same sentiment as those who were physically present there. Marshall McLuhan's
statement "The medium is the message," is proven here. He meant that
the procedure used to transmit a message is the key to the message.
---------------
media180sm2010.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-household-is... Cached
Jul 18,
2010 · I completely agree
with you that coverage of Princess Diana's death showed
both ... the world to grieve together. ... terms learned
in the text ...
----------
O CANADA
$1.8 Million collected in Martime Salvation Army
Kettles.... congrats.
The Salvation
Army’s 124th Annual Christmas Kettle Campaign Surpasses Fundraising Goal
Toronto,
ON (January 15, 2015) –
Thanks to contributions from donors, volunteers and community partners, The
Salvation Army raised $22 million dollars during its 124th annual
Christmas Kettle Campaign. Donations to the campaign will remain in the local
communities in which they were raised and will help The Salvation Army in the
fight against poverty throughout Canada.
“We are
truly touched by the generosity of our neighbours, peers and corporate
partners, year after year,” said Commissioner Susan McMillan, Territorial
Commander for The Salvation Army in Canada and Bermuda. “Their continued
support allows us to fulfill our mission to help people in need and moves us
one step closer to putting an end to poverty in Canada through the provision of
life-changing services.”
The
Christmas Kettle Campaign is The Salvation Army’s annual fundraiser, and the
largest charitable effort of the year for the nonprofit organization. Keeping
donations local ensures that Salvation Army units have the ability to help
people in need with basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter and other
provisions. Donations also enable The Salvation Army to help people find a way
out of poverty through programs such as substance abuse recovery, job and
skills training, and educational courses.
The
Salvation Army’s success during this year’s Christmas Kettle Campaign is due in
part to its corporate supporters, which included:
·
Great-West
Life, London Life and Canada Life donated $50,000 to The Salvation Army in
November to launch the Christmas Kettle Campaign.
·
Walmart
Canada partnered with The Salvation Army for “Walmart Fill the Kettle Day” on
Saturday, December 20, matching contributions made to Salvation Army Christmas
Kettles in its stores up to a maximum donation of $50,000.
·
Other
corporate partners that helped The Salvation Army by hosting Christmas Kettles
included Loblaw Companies Limited, Costco, BC Liquor Stores, LCBO (in Ontario),
Canadian Tire, Cadillac Fairview, Metro, Safeway, Save-on-foods, Sobeys and
more.
“Without
our corporate supporters, The Salvation Army’s Christmas Kettle Campaign would
not be successful,” said Commissioner McMillan. “Their support allows us to
raise awareness of our efforts to provide essential services to vulnerable
people and provides a convenient way for their generous customers to donate to
our work.”
The
Salvation Army has provided hope and dignity to millions of Canadians for more
than 130 years through the generosity of donors and volunteers. Christmas
Kettles are hosted at more than 2,000 locations across Canada, and thousands of
kettle workers volunteer their time to staff each kettle. The 2014 Christmas
Kettle Campaign ran from November 17 to December 24, 2014.
About
The Salvation Army:
The
Salvation Army is an international Christian organization that began its work
in Canada in 1882 and has grown to become the largest non-governmental direct
provider of social services in the country. The Salvation Army gives hope and
support to vulnerable people today and everyday in 400 communities across
Canada and more than 125 countries around the world. The Salvation Army offers
practical assistance for children and families, often tending to the basic
necessities of life, providing shelter for homeless people and rehabilitation
for people who have lost control of their lives to an addiction. When you give
to The Salvation Army, you are investing in the future of marginalized and
overlooked people in your community.
News
releases, articles and updated information can be found at www.SalvationArmy.ca
-------------
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