He looked more like Clint Eastwood, acting as the Queen’s bodyguard, than the mayor of Richmond.
That was the amusing memory Bev Boyd had of her dad, Gil Blair, who was Richmond’s mayor when Queen Elizabeth II arrived on the tarmac at Vancouver Airport.
After the passing of the 96-year-old British monarch on Thursday morning (Pacific), Boyd dug out the old photos of her dad meeting, greeting and escorting the Queen off her plane.
Date of Queen's visit to Richmond not clear
Blair was the city’s mayor from 1973 to 1990, however his daughter isn’t quite sure of the date her dad met the Queen, but there are records of her visiting Vancouver three times during Blair’s time in city hall.
“We joked that he looked like Clint Eastwood as her bodyguard,” Boyd told the Richmond News, noting that her mom, Barbara, is the woman in the “strange looking hat to his right.
“She was trying to keep up with British traditions…I never saw her wear a hat like that in my life.”
Boyd, who lives at the Blair family home on No. 3 and Finn roads, said she doesn’t recall her dad talking about meeting the Queen, other than what she read about the visit in the newspaper.
But she did remember that the former mayor – who passed away in 2006, age 79 – shared the same birth year as the late Queen, 1926.
