Veep Breached Canadian Etiquette

Vice President to Theodore Roosevelt, Charles W. Fairbanks “Failed to Observe the Proprieties” while on official visit to Canada, upon the Quebec “ter-centennial” or “tricentennial.”

English Woman Says Vice President Fairbanks Did Not Conform to Etiquette

Vice President Fairbanks, according to a prominent English woman who has written to a friend in St. Louis, made the French and English Canadians furious by his failure to observe the "proprieties" at the ter-centennial festivities at Quebec.


The Vice President is accused of standing up, in his carriage and making speeches "to the crowd" as he drove along the street, of standing ahead of the host in the "receiving line" at the garden-party and with quarreling with the mayor of the city, all of which. according; to reports have not "tended to increase the friendly relations between Canada and the United States."


The writer of the letter went from England to Quebec to attend the ceremonies. On account of her prominence, she was in a position to observe the Vice President's movements and therefore the effect they had on the English and French Canadians.


It is said that Canadian officials managed, to keep Vice President Fairbanks' breaches of official etiquette out of the Canadian. newspapers. The French and English Canadians, as a rule, are at "daggers'-polnts" on most questions, but they seem to be agreed that the Vice President assumed a position far beyond his official importance at the festivities. As Fairbanks was generally regarded as the official representative of the United States, the offense is considered all the more serious. —St. Louis, Missouri, 1908

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