'It was quite awesome': Windsor, Ont. man recalls 13-week tour across Great Lakes with Queen Elizabeth II

As Jack Simpson looks through photographs of his travels around the globe, memories of his excursion with royalty come flooding back.

Simpson was selected from HMCS Hunter in Windsor, Ont., to board HMCS Gatineau in Halifax during the 1959 royal tour of Canada.

“It was quite awesome,” Simpson recalls from his east Windsor home, one week following Queen Elizabeth II’s death. “Although, from day-to-day I went about my own business and on my own ship, it was still very exciting.”

Simpson said he was 16 years old when he served as an upper deck stoker helping fuel the senior escort ship to the royal yacht, Britannia. This, as the Queen, Prince Philip and then-U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower toured all of the Great Lakes at the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

“It was making history,” Simpson says. “And it was quite an ordeal.”

The nearly-81-year-old told CTV News Windsor he never spoke with Her Majesty or went aboard Britannia, but did note the escort was five miles long and that his young age wasn’t an issue.

80-year-old Jack Simpson from Windsor, Ont. recalls his brush with British royalty when he was 16-years-old and serving in the Canadian Navy during the 1959 royal tour of the Great Lakes. (Chris Campbell/CTV News Windsor)

“For 13 weeks we were the only ship behind her. I was 16 years old, but nobody ever stopped me from going in and having a beer at the pub,” Simpson says. “No problem there. They didn’t look at my face. They looked at my uniform, I guess.”

Simpson says his passion for travel followed his royal experience, not his career with the Royal Canadian Navy. He says he lived in Australia and Papua New Guinea for a number of years before returning to Southwestern Ontario.

“Get your education first before your travel,” Simpson says. “That is so much help to anybody in the world.”

Simpson explains he isn’t a monarchist but intends to watch the Queen’s funeral next week, noting he was saddened by her passing.

“She's been like a grandmother to me,” he says. “It's something that the rest of the world has lost a friend.”