At 82, he is still remarkably fit, his long legs turning the RCMP crowd-control fences into pygmy hurdles as he vaults over to the right place, the best place, the perfect place to meet face-to-face once again with his Queen.

Fit for 82, indeed, but nothing like the strapping specimen Ernest Phipps once was more than 60 years ago when, as a member of the Grenadier Guards, he would work out with his battalion in Windsor Great Park and the two young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, would wander down from the castle and stand in the grass.

"Just watching," he says with a shy smile. "Just watching."

He is used to watching his words. He is, after all, an Anglican priest, retired perhaps but also celebrating "my own Golden Jubilee" -- 50 years since his ordination and just one of many reasons he feels a special bond between himself and the teenaged Elizabeth, the young Elizabeth who took the Crown a half century ago and the 76-year-old Elizabeth who, on a bright, crisp Monday morning was making the final public appearance of her Jubilee Tour of Canada.

The Rev. Ernest Phipps had come down to the RCMP Equestrian Centre early in the morning. He had chosen his spot with care, and in the minutes between the Queen's actual arrival by motorcade and her walk to the open-air Royal Box from which she would watch an abbreviated version of the Musical Ride, he had readied himself for the moment.

He had carefully taken off his topcoat, folded it and placed it on the railing of the gate that was intended to keep the crowds at bay.

He had taken his hand and smoothed back his white, still elegant hair. Not as thick, certainly, as it had been back when he first saw her, but nor is he likely 6-foot-2 any more. Still, he stood so straight he may -- for those few minutes it took the Queen to move from the Visitors' Centre to the Royal Box -- have exceeded it.

He straightened his old, perfectly preserved Grenadier Guards blazer, made sure the medals did not obscure the crest, checked twice to see that his various service medals -- including tours of Africa and Italy with the signal corps -- were polished and shining and straight. And then he simply waited.

Queen Elizabeth II, dazzling as one of this fall's colours in emerald green, walked slowly past the flag-waving children, the hand-held cameras and the hopeful. She came to the single step that would take her across a walkway and down the next section of cheering royalty fans and, suddenly, she stopped.

Directly opposite, waiting, was the Rev. Ernest Phipps, at attention.

She smiled, perhaps the widest smile of the few she allows herself on most days, and went straight over to him, holding out her hand, which he took, bowing.

"We have met before, your Highness," he said.

"Yes," she said, smiling. "I noticed the Grenadier crest."

It took but a moment, it lasted forever. She moved on, the crowds calling, the Musical Ride waiting, and the Rev. Ernest Phipps paused to reflect on what royalty has meant to him all these 82 years.

His first clear remembrance of sadness is that day in 1925 when his father hurried into their home near London and announced that the "Old Queen," Alexandra, Edward VII's widow, was dead. His first sense of grandeur was watching George V open a bridge. He remembers Edward VIII, the abdicator, and stammering George VI, the Queen's father who once so perfectly labelled the family work as "The Firm."

He emigrated to Canada in 1948, before George VI died so young and his daughter found herself thrust into a role that the previous two monarchs had found extremely difficult, even impossible.

The Rev. Phipps remembers vividly the determination of that young woman. She was only 21, and still a princess, when she said, "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service."

Lady Antonia Fraser has written that history demands one great British monarch a century, and the Rev. Phipps has no doubt that this century's will be this woman who, today, leaves Canada for London.

And the measure will be the very one she set out for herself 50 years ago: duty.

"She is demonstrating every day," the Rev. Phipps said as the Musical Ride came to a close, "truly what it is to be a servant of the people.

"It's not an easy job, you know. I really feel that when she was crowned she took all her oaths to heart.

"But you want to know what really makes her a great monarch? It's the humility of her -- that wonderful, sincere humility."