World celebrates Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

Participants in a Diamond Jubilee fun run in New York wearing cardboard
cut faces of Queen Elizabeth II

British expats, Anglophiles, and royalists around the world are all one in celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.

In New York, a fun-run called “The Great British Run” was held at Central Park, with 600 runners all wearing cardboard cut faces of Royal Family members.

In California, Rose Tea Cottage in Pasadena held a British tea party, offering imported teas from England served in Royal memorabilia chinas.

In Canada, a member of the Commonwealth, the government appropriated $7.4 million for the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. The celebrations peaked –literally—at the summit of Barbeau Peak, the highest point of northern Canada’s Ellesmere Island.

In New Westminster, Vancover, The Queens Avenue United Church held a commemorative service where a choir sang songs at the Queen’s coronation. Church bells chimed afterwards 60 times, one for every year in the Queen’s reign.

In New Zealand, where the Queen also reigns as sovereign, the Auckland War Memorial Museum hosted a free Jubilee exhibition featuring archive footage from the Queen’s first trip to New Zealand in 1953, a year after her coronation.

Barbados also hosted a street party in St Lawrence Gap – the famed party strip on the island.

In Dubai, thousands of British expats also held their own celebrations akin to that in London, with street parties at Barasti beach.