A small town in northwest Canada is at a standstill as its newly elected mayor refuses to take an oath of allegiance to King Charles III in a major act of defiance.
The Yukon town of Dawson City is in legal limbo, with its city council unable to make any official decisions until the town’s mayor-elect Stephen Johnson is officially sworn in. According to Yukon law, a newly elected official must take an oath of allegiance to the King within 40 days of their election or their win “shall be considered null.”
The mayor-elect’s refusal is an act of solidarity with indigenous council member Darwyn Lynn, a member of the Trondëk Hwëchin First Nation, who has raised concerns about the oath due to the troubled history of First Nations people in the Commonwealth country.
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The oath of allegiance, which must be pledged when being sworn in, means that elected officials swear they “will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles III” and his “heirs and successors according to law.”
Johnson explained, “We can’t do anything legally required of us under the Municipal act,” referring to the standstill as “a bit of a sticky situation.” He wanted to be clear that “This is not being done with no disrespect to HIs Majesty King Charles.”
Canada is a former British colony and has a sordid history with the abuse and displacement of its indigenous citizens. Dawson City, which is home to around 2,400 people, used to be known as Tr’ochëk, until the Gold Rush of the late 1800s when nearly 17,000 settlers arrived to mine millions of dollars worth of gold found along the Klondike River.
The mayor-elect explained that this is “just something we wanted to do together to show solidarity in what we do here in this town,” and have proposed that the council take an alternative oath.
In 2022, the French-speaking province of Quebec passed historic legislation that ended the requirement to have elected officials take such an oath to the monarchy, referring to it as “a relic from the past.”
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