Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are coming to Canada next week
Forget the candlelit dinner and extended gazing into each others’ eyes over a chocolate soufflé: Meghan and Harry’s Valentine’s Day plans for 2024 have been revealed, and they’re unexpectedly…Canadian.
On February 14, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be leaving sunny Montecito, California, to head north of the border. Harry is just back from his roughly 24-hour visit to the U.K. to see his dad, King Charles, who revealed his cancer diagnosis this week. Next stop: Vancouver, to hype next year’s Invictus Games in Canada. Here’s everything we know about the couple’s Canadian visit—and what it means in the context of everything else (staff upheaval! Suits return! ) that’s swirling around the Sussexes at the moment.
Why are Harry and Meghan coming to Canada?
The Duke and the Duchess of Sussex are heading to British Columbia on February 14 for a ceremony marking the one-year countdown to the Invictus Games, which will be held in Whistler and Vancouver. The Invictus Games, of course, are the Olympics-esque competition founded by Harry to empower and support former military service people through sport.
This is the seventh time the Invictus Games have been held, and the first time they’ll be incorporating adaptive winter sports, like accessible skiing and snowboarding.
It’s also the second time the games have been held in Canada. The first time was in Toronto back in 2017, and as those familiar with Meghan and Harry lore will know, those games marked a major milestone in their romance. It’s where they first went public as a couple—who can forget Meghan sitting in the stands wearing the “Husband shirt” from pal Misha Nonoo’s label?—right in the city where they (semi) secretly fell in love.
Where are Meghan and Harry going to visit in Canada?
They’ll be in the Vancouver and Whistler areas for three days, primarily visiting the winter training camp where teams from various countries are prepping ahead of the games next winter.
It’s also possible they’ll pop up elsewhere: After all, last November they made a surprise appearance at a Vancouver Canucks vs. San Jose Sharks game, where we saw Prince Harry do the ceremonial puck drop, a nod to both the coming Invictus Games and a throwback to his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, who did the same thing 21 years before.
They’ve also got dramatic history in the area, having taken refuge in a (borrowed) palatial estate on Vancouver Island when they first left their jobs in the Royal Family back in 2020. Could we see them take a walk down memory lane, hitting the trails at Horth Hill Regional Park for old times sake? Or, more likely, could we see Meghan drop in at one of the local charities she supported while in the area? She did set a precedent, having stopped by Justice For Girls, a non-profit uplifting teenage girls, when she was in town in November.
Will Meghan and Harry bring Archie and Lilibet to Canada?
It’s not impossible—after all, we did get glimpses of the kids in their Netflix documentary—but given the Sussexes’ track record of fiercely guarding their privacy, we’d recommend against placing any large bets on Archie or Lilibet making an appearance in Vancouver.
Does this have anything to do with Suits supposedly coming back on air?
While it’s true that Suits—the show Meghan starred in and the reason she lived in Toronto, where it was shot—has been picked up by NBC for a possible return to screens following its wild streaming success, there’s no link between the now duchess visiting Canada and any purported reprisal of her role as paralegal Rachel Zane. In fact, her co-stars seemed to fairly definitively shut down any rumour in that realm at the Golden Globes when they revealed that while they were all in a text thread together, none of them had her new number.
And what about the fact that all their staff are quitting?
Over the last few weeks, the tabloids have crowed about a “revolving door” of staff at Archewell, Meghan and Harry’s production company, noting that five senior employees have left since December 2022. That these departures—like president Mandana Dayani—are said to be “amicable and planned,” as in her case, tends to be buried in these stories. Normal employee turnover in a new business tends to be far less clicky than, say, perpetuating another anti-Meghan narrative with roots in those “she sends emails at 5 a.m.!” stories of yore.
