Canadians reflect on Princess Diana with 20th anniversary of her death nearing
With the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death approaching Thursday, she has returned to our cultural imagination.
The late Princess of Wales has been gracing magazine covers as a style icon again. There is the new novel, “Imagining Diana,” which speculates what her life might have looked like if she had survived the car accident that killed her. And then there are the many new documentaries about her, including one where her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, speak about losing their mother for the first time.
Diana died at 36 in a paparazzi-fuelled car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.
Her death left people the world over devastated. In Toronto, the Princess of Wales Theatre became an impromptu shrine, Casey House, an AIDS hospice Diana visited, saw people line up for days to sign a book of condolences and the St. James Cathedral rang out half-muffled bells to mark her passing. In Ottawa and Vancouver, people left flowers outside the British High Commission, Rideau Hall and the British consulate.