EMILY HSUEH
OTTAWA April 17, 2021
A Pontiac face led the country in remembering the late Prince Phillip at the national ceremony on April 17.
The Very Reverend Elizabeth J. Bretzlaff made her hometown of Shawville proud last weekend after . . .
speaking at the national commemorative ceremony for the Duke of Edinburgh.
Phillip passed away on April 9 at the age of 99. But according to Bretzlaff, the ceremony for his eventual passing began being organized far in advance.
“As the dean of [Christ Church Cathedral], I’ve been working with Heritage Canada and in fact the plans for service on Saturday were in the works for about seven years,” she said. “I knew on Friday morning when I found out he had died in the night that my week was looking very different than I thought it was.”
From the moment that the news of the Duke’s passing was announced, Bretzlaff and the team organizing the event had a lot to plan.
“Essentially, there were eight days before his service would be in England and protocol requires that our national service be after the one in England, which is why it was on the Saturday at 12:30 p.m.,” Bretzlaff explained. “One of the things we had to do first of all was decide the scope of the ceremony, especially given the lockdown at the moment. We had planned for many options over the past seven or eight months, everything from a full-scale memorial service to what ended up happening which was the most scaled down version.”
Bretzlaff opened the ceremony with a welcome, acknowledgement of the land, and an opening prayer. She and Bishop Shane Parker bookended the service and filled the peripheral space, she said.
Growing up in Shawville, she had always felt drawn to leadership roles in the church. She received a master’s degree in divinity from the Vancouver School of Theology, and soon after became ordained as a deacon in 1993 and a priest in 1994.
For a time, she lived in New Zealand working with and educating youth for the Diocese of Dunedin, but traveled back to Canada in 2010 and continued working in a pastoral position with young people, “to make the Anglican tradition alive and relevant in an urban context,” as it says in her biography on the cathedral’s website. Bretzlaff took up the title of dean of the cathedral in September 2020.
“I had always known it would come to this at some point, being the dean. It’s a bit overwhelming,” she said. “It’s the last thing I expected to be doing in my life, I didn’t expect to become the dean of the cathedral and I certainly didn’t expect to be doing that particular service.”
Despite being ordained for 27 years, Bretzlaff said she still felt nervous going into the momentous ceremony.
“It was interesting, during the week I wasn’t really phased by it, it’s what I do. So I was carrying on. Then by Friday, I started to feel a bit nervous, then just as I was about to step out, my heart was pounding. I realized that, if my microphone was on, I wasn’t sure if they’d hear the organ over my heart beating,” she added with a laugh.
In the end, she realized she didn’t need to worry and noted that the ceremony went much better than she expected.
“I was really, really pleased and I think all the elements were a good honouring of his life. And I think it was very Canadian,” she said. “It was proper tone, it was just a very respectful service and it was a pleasure to be a part of it and a real honour.”
Since the service, Bretzlaff said she has received many notes and reconnected with several people who have congratulated her on her accomplishment. Hometown pride is something very strong in the Pontiac, and Bretzlaff was proud to embody that and to have given people to come together and talk about.
“I want to say thank you for all the lovely notes and supportive things I received afterwards and I also just want to say that the cathedral here has such an amazing team,” she said. “I knew the whole cathedral was holding us in their hearts as we did it. It really was a unifying event in many ways.”
