With each and every photo from the Canadian Invictus Games, I can’t help but think “yeah, I get why they were so mad.” The Duke and Duchess of Sussex just have “it.” Charisma, charm, photogenic beauty, and they seem so happy, in love and well-suited for each other. That’s why those awful, salty people were so mad and why they haven’t been able to move on for over five f–king years.
These are photos from Monday, where Meghan and Harry went to Whistler to open up that part of the games (the competitions are divided between Vancouver and Whistler). Harry made a speech and he brought Meghan up to speak too. Meghan wore a new winter-weather ensemble – a maxi coat by Mackage, which retails for $1250. She also wore $680 gloves from Moncler and Sorel Joan of Arctic boots.
Before they arrived to this Whistler event, Harry and Meghan visited Squamish Nation and paid their respects to the First Nations community. Town & Country had a beautiful piece about the Sussexes’ visit and what it meant after decades of being ignored and marginalized by the Windsors.
“It’s a special day for us,” Wilson Williams, the spokesperson for Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), tells T&C. “I’ve been waiting to host them in our community. I’ve been a part of the [Invictus] journey for three years.”
That journey began when Vancouver and Whistler campaigned to host the Games, and made Indigenous voices a cornerstone of their bid, proclaiming that Four Host Nations— Lil̓wat7úl (Líl̓wat), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations—would be at the center of the event.
Williams himself was instrumental in the bid, and he traveled to London as part of the pitch a few years ago. “The night before the bid, I called my auntie, who’s an elder matriarch of our language,” he recalls. “I said, ‘I’m in London for the Invictus Games. I’m representing the Four Host Nations for the Indigenous representative.’ And she started crying.”
Williams told his aunt about how Squamish’s Hereditary Chief Ian Campbell lent him regalia to wear in London. “He opened his closet to pick any of his regalia, and I knew what it meant. She told me that in 1906, when Chief Capilano went to address the King in London, he was the first person to leave our villages and territories and go overseas to do this. It was a big deal. So she was crying because she said the last time someone [from Squamish] walked the streets of London was when Chief Capilano was donning his regalia—just like I was going to do the next day. So that was a magical, intimate moment.”
The bidding process was anxiety-inducing, he remembers, but “I knew how special it was for Indigenous people to be part of Invictus—we all are unconquered. We are persevering and finding that healing. We are now part of the Invictus family—giving what we can to the games, and adding that healing and medicine and spiritual side of our culture, our traditions, and our language,” he continues. “So the Invictus Games now is that much more richer; Prince Harry knew right away.” When the Duke of Sussex announced that Vancouver and Whistler had won the bid, Williams remembers, Harry said it was with “the invitation and permission of the Indigenous people.”
Harry and Meghan have “embraced the moment,” Williams says. This morning, he drove with them from their hotel in Vancouver to Squamish Nation, and spoke to them about his people’s history with the royal family, telling them the story his aunt told him of Chief Capilano traveling to London in 1906 and how King Edward VII did not meet him and his delegation. Capilano “just left a petition there of our people that signed it, saying that we’re still here, please stop taking resources, land, and our rights away. We are here. We were becoming a diminishing people. A lot of our people were being decimated, in certain ways, of sicknesses.”
A few decades later, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth embarked on a 1939 tour of Canada, which ended in Vancouver. “Squamish Nation were advised that the royal family would stop,” Williams explains. “So Chief Capilano’s son carved two totem poles, and they built an arch over Marine Drive. The designs on the arch and the totem poles demonstrated Chief Capilano’s visit to London,” he says. “Our people had a bunch of gifts—when people come and visit, we gift them. They don’t leave empty handed, or leave with an empty stomach.”
But, King George and Queen Elizabeth didn’t stop in the community. “It was heartbreaking for our people,” he says. He told Harry and Meghan this story as they drove over the Lions Gate Bridge, recalling a conversation he and Harry had in Düsseldorf at the Invictus Games in 2023. “I said, ‘Remember when we were talking about righting wrongs? This is the moment, here today, when we do that.’”
The Sussexes then arrived at Squamish Nation, stopping in the community where his great-grandparents did not. During their visit, they joined in a ceremony. Harry had a drum, Meghan had clappers, and they played music as children danced around them. Their visit “righted a wrong from the past, and it was a special moment in our community,” Williams says.
This is the kind of thing which the British tabloids would snidely refer to as “woke” – as in, how dare Harry and Meghan show respect to the First Nations community, how dare they respect indigenous culture, how dare they do more than Harry’s colonialist relatives. It’s beautiful that Harry and Meghan were able to do this. Meanwhile, the left-behinds can’t be bothered to travel to Canada whatsoever – they’re too busy taking ski vacations and jetting off to Italy.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
