The second time former PA resident Wilfred Daniels met the Queen, he chastised her for missing his 100th birthday. (submitted)

By Susan McNeil

Queen Elizabeth meeting

Queen Elizabeth symbolized dignity, grace and duty, says family of veteran who met her twice

Sep 19, 2022 | 8:00 AM

Lori Neault’s great-grandfather was born in the UK, a veteran, a Saskatchewan homesteader, and a staunch believer in duty, just like the Queen he served.

Wilfred Daniels also lived in Prince Albert for years and met the late monarch twice before he died in 1990, but he was somewhat nonchalant about that Neault said. In fact, she only knew of the first meeting from the journals she inherited from him.

“Really Grandpa, nothing like meeting the Queen and just sticking it in the journal and it didn’t seem, as a humble man, it was a big deal to him,” she said.

The first meeting was in 1961. Daniels had travelled back to England to see his family for the first time in 42 years.

Daniels watched the Kent’s wedding procession on June 8 with his family and shook the hands of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip. He was proud of the moment, but he was more excited about being with his family, said Neault.

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The second time Daniels met the Queen was in 1987, and he had moved from Prince Albert to Saskatoon. It was just after his 103^rd birthday.

“He gave her heck because she was supposed to come in 1984 which was his 100^th birthday year and they ended up cancelling,” Neault said.

“He said to her you missed my 100^th birthday and she said, well I hope you got my letter, which of course he did. We made sure he got his letter from the Queen for his 100^th birthday,” Neault remembers.

Daniels then told the monarch that she had missed his birthday again and she asked what he meant, so he explained it had been a few days before.

“She said, well I’m here now, Happy Birthday,” said Neault.

As a youth, Daniels worked as a page in a hospital in his birth country but decided at age 13 to emigrate to Canada, which he did when he was 22, arriving in 1906 with $20 in his pocket.

From Halifax, he travelled to the immigration office in Winnipeg, and they told him to go to Whitewood in what was then the Northwest Territories. There he started working for a farmer but ended up getting land near Viscount under the Homestead program.

Daniels married in 1910 and had four sons with his wife, Eva, who had also immigrated from England.

He was a veteran of the First World War and enlisted in Saskatoon with the 96^th Battalion, the Canadian Highlanders.

“I have notes of him serving in the Battle of Passchendaele,” Neault said. Because he was on active duty, he didn’t even know that he had been promoted during the war.

“Again, there was this humbleness, ‘I don’t care. I just did my duty.’ He didn’t care about the rank, he cared about his fellow soldier,” she said.

In fact, during one of the battles in the Great War, Daniels carried his wounded commanding officer across enemy lines and to the hospital.

When asked, he said he would not leave his commanding officer on the battlefield.

Despite not boasting about meeting the Queen, he was an admirer, Neault explained.

“He loved her dignified grace. He would often tell us that she signified dignity and grace and duty. Those were the three words he always, always said when he talked about the Queen,” she said.

Daniels was a loyal subject down to the last day of his life.

The veteran’s nursing home he was living in had a common area so Daniels and another veteran would go down have their tea and toast the Queen daily.

Subsequent generations of the Daniels family have felt the call of duty with all four of his sons enlisting but that generation has said they enlisted so following generations would not have to.

A sense of commitment to community was still passed on, however.

“That was something that Grandpa always insisted on, was you leave your community in a better place than you found it,” Neault said.

Neault said she felt disbelief when she heard of the Queen’s passing on September 8.

“You feel like they’re going to live forever, even though you know they can’t,” she said.

It might be through PVR, but Neault will be watching the funeral on Monday, which starts in the middle of the night with the timer difference.

Her 17-year-old son, who has autism, is a huge history buff and is insistent on it, she said.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com