She was supposed to travel by sea, but that would have taken too long.

When she touched down on Oct. 12, 1951, at the Malton Airport (in 1963 Lester B. Pearson became prime minister, and in 1984 the airport took his name) she was 25 years old and still 20 months from acceding to her father’s throne.

Field Marshal Alexander — a.k.a. the 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis — was the British-born military commander dispatched to Canada to serve as governor general.

The bulk of the travel occurred on the steam-powered, 10-coach royal train. Visiting delegations were fronted by Brownies, Cub Scouts and war-hardened soldiers. She watched two of the NHL’s six teams play (the Montreal Canadiens thumped the New York Rangers 6-1) at the Montreal Forum, which has since been converted into a movie theatre.

Then she visited the Queen Mary Veteran’s Hospital. The institution now serves, poetically, as a geriatric facility.

The point of all this should be clear: Canada changed enormously over the course of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign. But despite her delicate stature, her grandmotherly headscarves, her high, regal voice, she seemed eternal.

Elizabeth’s 1951 arrival in Canada, which she was visiting on behalf of her father, King George VI, was a pitch to a patriotic crowd. In Toronto, seven of every 10 people had British ancestry. Canada had just fought the Second World War along with the British. Canada was in thrall to its future queen.

But the growth and ease of air travel was the great technological leap of that time and she was a trailblazer in a tiara. For Elizabeth, who was crowned Queen in June 1953, flight offered new opportunities that she seized in order to bolster — or at least to slow the decline — of her empire.

“Canadians, up until her reign — and with the sole exception of her parents’ visit before the war — the monarchy was something over there. It was never over here,” said Hector Mackenzie, the retired senior departmental historian for Global Affairs Canada.

“It made a difference in terms of sentiment toward the monarchy.”

She made 22 official visits to Canada as its queen, spending a serendipitous 222 days on Canadian soil, according to statistics from Heritage Canada.

That’s more than enough time for her to have seen the change of the faces both from a distance — in the Canadian crowds that greeted her — and from up close.

Her own first representative as head of state in Canada was Vincent Massey — the first Canadian-born governor general. The last that she would see on the country’s soil in 2010 was Michaëlle Jean, a Haitian-born Canadian immigrant.

“To her credit, in her visits … she acknowledged and associated herself with those demographic changes in Canada,” said Mackenzie. “She hasn’t gone purely to pay homage to the British institutions in Canada, but instead has tended to broaden her agenda and her appeal.”

She went to places like Flin Flon, Churchill, Norway House, Happy Valley Goose Bay, Rivière-du-Loup and Qualicum Beach; she attended the 1976 Olympics in Montreal; she signed the Canadian Constitution on Parliament Hill in 1982; she toured the flood damage of Manitoba in 1997; and she visited Iqaluit in 2002, three years after Nunavut was named a territory.

“Your land is indeed your strength,” she declared in a speech to the Nunavut legislature that was punctuated by what was later described as “three words of simply but clearly formed Inuktitut: ‘Nakurmiit ammalu quviasugitsi.’ ”

Meaning, in the Inuit language, “Thank you and congratulations.”

Queen Elizabeth II also spoke French, at times more fluently than some Canadian prime ministers, Mackenzie noted.

But there was a cautiousness — or, perhaps, a “once-burned-twice-shy” approach — to Quebec, the heartland of the French language, the place where Gen. Wolfe’s British forces overwhelmed their French adversaries on the Plains of Abraham to take control of this land that we now call our country.

In 1939, Elizabeth’s parents received a hero’s welcome when they travelled to Quebec City as part of a royal visit intended to shore up support for the war against Hitler’s Nazi forces.

“When her parents came they were exotic,” Mackenzie said. “The idea that the king and queen would be in Canada was just exceptional. It’s almost like when a celebrity comes to town and there’s a polite acceptance, even if you don’t necessarily like the person.”

In 1964, anger and violence was brewing between the Quebec indépendantistes and the forces of English Canada. But neither Buckingham Palace nor the Prime Minister’s Office foresaw what we might call today the problematic “optics” of the royal arrival in Quebec City.

Queen Elizabeth and her entourage sailed aboard the royal yacht, the Britannia, and made a Wolfeian ascent of the fortress city, which was secured by anxious police officers armed with nightsticks. The Queen was greeted outside the provincial legislature, but the visit was marred by the protesters’ show of force, chants calling on Elizabeth to “stay at home,” and a clash with police, resulting in several dozen people being arrested.

For a leader who was so outwardly unflappable in the roughest of storms, the Quebec experience must have hurt. With the exception of trips to Montreal for the 1967 World Expo and the ’76 Summer Games, she didn’t make another official visit to Quebec again until 1987.

In more recent years, as she plodded along like the calm, assertive grandmother and great-grandmother she became, Mackenzie suggested that the public’s view of the monarchy also softened.

As troubled and as troubling as some members of the Royal Family were shown to be, Queen Elizabeth managed to stay just above the fray and mostly out of the tabloids.

Not a tippler, not a cheater, not a tyrant, nor a threat — politically or otherwise.

She was the “heads” in our coin tosses, the author of congratulatory or sympathetic letters in times of Canadian triumph and tragedy, the distant relation our prime ministers paid a visit to when they had occasion to touch ground in England.

“She projected a very grandmotherly view of the monarchy. Not confrontational, not interfering in any way, but going with the flow,” MacKenzie said. “

“It’s easier to see people reacting more strongly to her son.”

Which brings us to His Majesty King Charles III, as the 73-year-old heir is now to be known.

If one of the keys to Elizabeth’s successful reign was that she was able to be physically present with her subjects and make the monarchy a concrete fact rather than simply a legal or political theory, then the challenge for her son, as well as Prince William, when he succeeds to the throne, will be to make a connection that has some relevance in the modern era.

In 1871, as Canada was preparing for nationhood, the population was drawn from 20 countries.

In 1951, Princess Elizabeth set foot in Canada and Canadians saw their future queen — one who mostly looked like them and, for recent British immigrants, talked like them as well.

With Canadians in the 2016 census tracing their origins back to 250 countries — and only a quarter of respondents to an April 2022 Angus Reid poll saying that Canada should remain a constitutional monarchy — how can King Charles, or Prince William, hope to forge such a connection?

Charles has been to Canada 17 times (four times with Princess Diana, his first wife, and four times with his second wife, Queen Consort Camilla). He has taken a great interest in the fight against climate change and has met with Indigenous Canadians as well as residential school survivors and during past visits.

The treatment of Prince Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, who called Canada home for seven years, will do nothing to endear Canadians from diverse backgrounds to the family.

Markle told Oprah Winfrey of the alienation she felt when she and Harry were informed of “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he was born.”

The concerned conversationalist was reported to have been Archie’s grandfather, Charles himself. He has denied this, but the stain is now set so deeply it will never get out.

“Growing up as a woman of colour, as a little girl of colour, I know how important representation is. I know how you want to see someone who looks like you in certain positions,” Markle said in the interview.

“I could never understand how it wouldn’t be seen as an added benefit, and a reflection of the world today. At all times, but especially right now, to go, ‘How inclusive is that, that you can see someone who looks like you in this family, much less one who’s born into it?’”

Queen Elizabeth wasn’t the source of the scandal — Harry said as much in private to Oprah — but she was forced to do what she has liked least to do throughout her reign: address a royal headache; comment on the sordid affairs in which her family has a terrible habit of becoming embroiled.

“While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately,” she said, adding, “Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much-loved family members.”

Classic, classy, Queen Elizabeth.

“Quite frankly she was a charming person and she’s been probably the best asset that the institution of the monarchy has had in a long time,” Mackenzie said.

“It’s an open question whether the monarchy as part of the fabric of the Canadian Constitution will last much beyond Elizabeth’s death.”