On television, in newspaper articles, in books and in columns, I have described my British subject status in great detail. When the Queen Mum and King George VI made the first visit of a reigning British monarch to Canada, my father, a fervent monarchist, was ready.

My father dressed me up in a Union Jack beanie, Union Jack socks, shorts and shoes, to stand and cheer the Royal couple as their car wound its way slowly through the North End of Winnipeg, the same spot that 20 years before had been the scene of the epic Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.

My father brooked no criticism of the Royals or of the British from Jewish communists or Jewish Zionists or the pupils at his school. Britain's greatest hero, Benjamin Disraeli, was my father's personal pal. The Queen Mum and King George contrasted exquisitely with the tsar and tsarina my father had bitterly fought in Russia.

My mother, a quiet woman, and one who had enjoyed flirting with the German troops that occupied her village in the First World War, was an avid monarchist as well. She had this black gabardine suit and white blouse outfit hanging in the closet, just waiting to be worn on important occasions like visits of the Royals to Winnipeg. For such visits my mother would prepare herself for hours to look nice, as when she mingled with the crowds who greeted Princess Elizabeth in Winnipeg in the early 1950s.

My respect, perhaps my affection, for the Royals comes almost by osmosis, by association with people I love. My parents' devotion to the Royals kindled similar attitudes in me.

My fondness for John George Diefenbaker took me a long way as a British subject. It was easy for me to identify with Diefenbaker, the monarchist and the first ethnic prime minister in the country's history.

Diefenbaker had paid a huge price in Saskatchewan for his German heritage. He often said if his last name were that of his mother, Campbell Bannerman, he would have been prime minister of Canada at least a decade before he actually got the job.

Diefenbaker's vociferous stance as a British subject was his way of assuring English Canada that he was not an alien, that he was more English than the English. These stances, of course, led him into conflict with the Quebecois and with restless ethnic groups not so certain they wanted to be British subjects.

By the 1960s, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was proclaiming a strident American patriotism that all American ethnic groups could buy into. Kennedy's Pax Americana was rightly described by philosopher George Grant as un-Canadian and intrusively so. Kennedy's Pax Americana and Diefenbaker's British subject philosophy were bound to clash.

When Kennedy wanted to place nuclear missiles in Canada in 1963, Lester Pearson obliged and Dief was driven from office. The nation that George Grant was lamenting for in his classic, Lament For A Nation was British North America, Diefenbaker's Canada. After Kennedy's demolition of Diefenbaker, Canadians could no longer be defined as "A British subject I was born, a British subject I shall die."

A heavy price was paid for all these abrupt changes. Bitterness between Quebec and the rest of the country developed over the flag. As each bit of British heritage was chipped away, the Anglos of Canada felt they were losing a vital part of their heritage; they felt they were willy-nilly being forced into becoming Americans.

With much of these feelings I was in great sympathy. My deep affection for Diefenbaker, an old man when I got to know him as a solitary MP in Ottawa in the early '70s, made me see his point of view and cherish it.

But with my parents and Diefenbaker gone, the British subject in me was rapidly disappearing. The Queen Mum that I had loved was also being given a revisionist media grilling befitting an Imelda Marcos. The professional Kissinger-baiter, Christopher Hitchens, said the Queen Mum was a nazi sympathizer because she welcomed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain back to England after the infamous Munich Pact in 1938.

None of this revisionism is the Queen Mum's fault. None of this revision existed in the magic royal tour of 1939. Alas, Canadians are no longer born British subjects nor do they die as such.

Too bad. I may not be the British subject I was in 1939, but I still love the Queen Mum. I still see the British heritage as a central link in the Canadian identity.

And if it helps my country in any way, I'm ready, aye ready, to die a British subject.