Following the death of 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, some Kamloops area residents are reflecting back on their memories of when the Royal Family made stops in British Columbia.

In the summer of 1939, Kamloops residents Rose Blades and Tracy Sjodin saw the Royal family while they were touring Canada by CN Rail.

The two girls first saw King George, his wife Elizabeth, and the two princesses, Elizabeth who was 13 years-old at the time, and her sister, Margaret who was nine, at the CN Station near Riverside Park.

“That’s when we saw Margaret and the Queen and all of them standing on the back of the caboose, hanging onto the railings waving at us; and my little brother who was only three years old, took off, and we lost him; so everyone was trying to find this kid,” Sjodin chuckled.

Blades who was six-years-old at the time, and seven-year-old Sjodin, were both attending Brocklehurst school on Crestline Street in Kamloops. Their class of eight children were chosen to do the entertainment for the Royal family.

Speaking on NL Newsday, Sjoden says they performed a Dutch Dance at the Capital Theatre, on Seymour Street.

“We were up on the theatre, it was just a small stage, but it didn’t take very long, we had done the Dutch dance that we had practiced, and then that was the end of it,” said Sjoden.

“We didn’t know too much, because we were young and this was all happening in behind us. We knew the mothers were getting together to make the outfits for us but it was a very exciting time.”

Blades says masses of people came out to see not only the Royal family.

“There were crowds of people that came to see the King and Queen and of course they wanted to see the entertainment that was going to be happening at the theatre, and we had to get up there and walk from the CN station to the Capital Theatre and put on this entertainment,” she said.

While Blades doesn’t remember a lot about the day, she does add that she fainted while waiting for the Royal Family at the train station.

“Tracy remembered a lot, especially the fact that I fainted and had to be put in a tent along with other people… It was very, very, very hot in Kamloops that day,” she recalled.

Meanwhile, Merritt resident Jim Madill says he met the Queen and Prince Philip in Prince George back in 1959.

“The Queen was much younger then, very attractive, very beautiful, still was and is to this day,” he told NL News.

“She will be really missed by many in this country as well as around the world. A very, very understanding lady, very loved and a good sense of humour and very well educated.”

Madill who was 17-years-old and in Grade 11 at the time, says he even had the opportunity to talk to the Queen herself.

“We could only talk to her for so long because there was so much security around,” he said, though he noted he was able to tell her about his job as a reporter, covering school sports.

“She was very, very impressed and she said, ‘gee, you’re so young!'” he recalled.

“Well, they were training me and that’s when we got cut off from talking because they were three and a half hours late getting into Prince George and the park was just overcrowded with people.”