Kids capture Queen's smiles

TORONTO - It was the kids who seemed to get the biggest charge out of the Queen's weaving tour of picturesque southern Ontario on Saturday.

They lined the streets, climbed trees and fences trying to get a bird's eye view of the royal visitor.

The Queen, looking refreshed in a yellow floral outfit after a day's break in her 10-day Canadian tour, appeared to delight in their frankness and enthusiasm.

She made three stops and at each venue to took time out - maybe a bit too much time, tour organizers said privately - to talk with her young admirers and accept their flowers.

One appointment was at historic Bell Homestead in Brantford, the house in which Alexander Graham Bell conceived of the telephone, invented 150 years ago this year.

Richard Hill, 13, welcomed the Queen in the homestead's dining room and showed her a silver tea set given as a wedding gift to Bell in 1877.

Another boy demonstrated how one of Bell's first telephones operated.

The Queen listened intently to each child as they explained the origin and use of various artifacts, 90 per cent of them original to the onetime Bell home.

John McLennan, president of Bell Canada, and Hugh Bell, the inventor's great-grandson, walked her through a telephone technology display and looked on as she sent a message to the royal computer website from the spot where Bell made the first long-distance telephone call.

Outside, security was keeping close tabs on Laurie Fay, who recently caused a stir by parading topless at a motorcycle gang convention in southern Ontario.

Police said she was contained for "causing a disturbance" and yelling out to the monarch.

"They must have thought I was going to run out and rip my dress off or something," Fay said.

Prince Philip, meanwhile, took in some scenery of a grimmer nature in a tour of parts of Manitoba's Red River Valley devastated by spring flooding.

His helicopter touched down for an hour in Ste. Agathe, a peaceful town of 500 struggling to rebuild after it was submerged by more than a metre of water when the Red overran its banks.

"It was an awful mess was it?" the prince asked one cleanup volunteer in a walking tour of the damage. "It's extraordinary what fresh water will do."

In Brantford, the Queen also lunched with 42 young achievers, selected for their community efforts.

"I'm excited and honored. I feel like a movie star," said Melissa Linklater, 16, who is involved in Crimestoppers.

Earlier in the day, the Queen's motorcade of 11 black limousines toured country roads flanked by green fields and fine examples of Victorian architechture.

The RCMP said the Queen had asked her driver to slow down and she reportedly lowered her window to wave at the hundreds gathered on the roadsides.

The Queen also visited Stratford, her first visit in 38 years, and enjoyed a front-row seat for the wedding scene from the famed Shakespeare festival's current production of The Taming of the Shrew.

She laughed as she watched a headstrong Katharina tell her new husband, Petruchio, "If you love me, stay.", during a rehearsal of the Stratford Festival production.