FRENCH KING’S INSIGNIA

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12249, 22 September 1925, Page 11

FRENCH KING’S INSIGNIA

RESTORED TO QUEBEC The escutcheon of Louis XV. of France, taken from the gates of Quebeo City in 1759, was handed back in Hastings, England, recently to the Mayor of Quebec, as represented by Mr P. C. Larkin, with appropriate reference to the ontente cordiale between France and Britain and tributes to the part Canadian troops had played in the Great War. Thus in the town, famous in history as tho scene where William the Conqueror landed, overcame King Harold and changed the course of English history, fresh history was made in strengthening the link between French Quebeo and English Hastings with a common bond of imperial sentiment. With the phrase: ‘ ‘To you, Mr Larkin, High Commissioner for Canada, I now give this shield and ask you to take it across the wide Atlantic and up the St. Lawrence river and hand it hack to the Mayor of Quebec,” Viscount Willingdon, for the Lord Mayor and Council of Hastings, returned the escutcheon to those who thus regain with pride their possession of tlffe 166-year-old insignia of the famous French regime. ' . Mr Larkin accepted the gift and rereferred to the significance of the occasion and the close brotherhood and. in- # torests of such a ceremony. Ho presented to the town a reproduction to replace the original.