“... the Duke came past — and he winked at her.”

Prince Philip was good at stuff like that.

In 1976, when he escorted the Queen to Canada for the Montreal Olympics, they stopped first at Halifax, where I was then serving at the fleet hospital. Like every other unit of the Canadian Forces Medical Service, Stadacona Hospital was stripped down to a skeleton crew to staff the Olympic Band-Aid Team, and I found myself on a relentless cycle of night shifts, for which I required a constant supply of reading material.

So I came out of the Halifax Public Library with a fresh load to find Spring Garden Road barricaded and a flag-waving throng on the sidewalk. Not clued in, I approached the cop holding down the intersection of Brunswick Street. Just as I reached him, he snapped to attention and saluted, so I dropped my bag of books and did the same. The royal motorcade was half a block away.

We were a conspicuous pair, that cop and I. He wore the traditional dress uniform of Canadian police, which looks like the “patrol blues” of the pre-war Militia. I wore white hospital workdress, with a double row of brass buttons on the bodice, and a green CF felt hat.

When the Queen’s car reached us, the Duke stuck his head out the window and frankly stared. Then he returned the salute. As the car passed, the salute turned into a “thumbs-up” wave.