ROYAL VISIT TO CHRISTCHURCH

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27094, 18 July 1953, Page 8

ROYAL VISIT TO CHRISTCHURCH

CHILDREN’S FUNCTION SUGGESTED

The possibility of holding a special children’s function in Higley Park during the Queen’s visit to Christchurch will be discussed with the Controller of the Royal Tour (Mr A. G. Harper) when he visits Christchurch next Wednesday. The suggestion came from a meeting of the Canterbury Education Board yesterday morning, and the chairman (Mr S. J. Irwin) said last evening that he had submitted a plan to a meeting of the Royal Tour Committee yesterday afternoon. » ’ “The proposal will present many difficulties for those arranging the Queen’s itinerary, and nothing can be done till the matter has been put before Mr Harper,” he said. The recommendation that school children should be assembled in Hagley Park so that the Queen equid move among them on her return from a visit to the Disabled Servicemen’s Training Centre, Riccarton, on the afternoon of January 19 was made by the board, after a letter had been read from the North Canterbury Primary Schools Headmasters’ Association expressing regret that no children’s function had been arranged during the Royal visit. Local authorities had overlooked the interests of children in not arranging a special children’s function during the Queen’s visit to Christchurch, said the letter. The Queen had expressed a wish to meet as many children as possible in the course of her tour, and members of the association felt that a function where Her Majesty could spend some time among the children would have been preferable to the existing arrangement by which the children would see her only for a few moments as she passed along the route.

The headmasters’ suggestion should be considered, Mr Irwin told the board. The present arrangements were that school children should be lined along Harper avenue at a good vantage point to see the Queen as she drove to Riccarton. The Royal party would return by the same route, so the children would see the Queen twice, he said."