We don't like Prince Charles (or Yanks) but we Canadians will adore Kate

The first time a Prince William crossed the Atlantic to visit Canada, the place did not leave much of an impression. 

'The face of this country is truly deplorable,' the Prince, who later became King William IV, wrote in 1786. 

He told his father that Britain's largest colony seemed 'a most dreadful inhospitable and barren country', though one populated with women 'of the most obliging kind'.

How things have changed.

When the latest Prince William and his wife Kate arrive on Thursday, it will feel something like a return home.

Canada has been the favourite destination of the Royals since before the Queen's 1953 Coronation, and the couple are likely to be greeted with the sort of warm-hearted crowds that will bring to mind Britain in the Fifties.

There's a good reason why the couple chose Canada for their first official overseas visit. 

If the House of Windsor hopes to use the youthful couple as an image-boosting distraction from the unpopular prospect of a future King Charles, there is no better place to begin the job than in Canada.

This is the safest ground for Monarchs.

Alone among the major Commonwealth states, Canada has never embarked on any official attempt to replace the system of constitutional monarchy with something homegrown.

Of all the countries that have Queen Elizabeth as their head of state, Canadians. in part because we are so eager to appear different from the neighbouring Americans, seem the least interested in questioning the value of the Crown, and the most satisfied with the old-fashioned curiosity of constitutional monarchy.

Even Quebec separatists, who want to turn the French-speaking province into an independent country, do not consider the Monarchy an issue worthy of protest these days.

And Canada's immigrants, 300,000 of whom arrive every year, are often the most eager to take part in Royal visits.

This is a huge country specked with cities – Victoria, Windsor, Regina – named in honour of William's family. Canada is the only Commonwealth country to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday, May 24, as a national holiday.

Crossing its six time zones and ten provinces – seven of them larger than Britain – William might get the feeling that the whole place was built as a tribute to his ancestors.

Perhaps this is why Queen Elizabeth has made 22 official tours of Canada (more than any other Commonwealth country), enrolled her son Andrew at Canada's Lakefield College School for a year, and treated Canada's politics with the sort of devotion that led former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to say that she was more knowledgeable than any member of the British Government.

In 1990, a year of perilous constitutional discord in Canada, she reassured a crowd of 40,000 loyalists in Ottawa by declaring: 'I am not just a fair-weather friend.'

Nobody doubted her.

Why does Canada appear so deferential at a moment when other colonials regard the Crown with growing disdain? 

In part, it is Canada's unique history. If the Americans were the religious-extremist outcasts and Australians were the prisoners, founding Canadians were the civil servants and the middle managers of the world's largest resource-extraction companies.

They were bolstered by tens of thousands of Empire loyalists who fled post-independence America.

Even after Victoria granted Canada its independence in 1867, largely against the will of its citizens, large numbers of Canadians continued to view themselves as displaced Britons. 

In the two world wars, Canadian soldiers told recruiters they were signing up to fight for 'our country' – by which they meant Britain.

It's not that Canadians are enamoured by the actual idea of constitutional monarchy: polls show that about half of them feel that the Crown should ideally be replaced with a home-grown or elected head of state. 

Those numbers are likely to grow as Canada approaches its 150th year of independence in 2017, and the advent of King Charles will doubtless lead to a much-needed debate over the best way to select a Canadian head of state.

But there is a good reason why they may still end up sticking with the Royal Family, even during Charles's reign. 

Canada's politics and society are shaped and governed by its relation to its far more powerful neighbour, the United States – a country with less land but ten times as many people, far more money, and all-encompassing influence over Canada's economy, culture, media and language.

So as Canadians became more nationalist and independent from Britain after the Second World War, they also became even more determined to distinguish themselves from the Yanks.

The Crown, however anachronistic and musty it appeared, was a badge of difference, and Canadian activists on both sides of the political spectrum brandished it as a shield against what they saw as growing Americanism.

The alternative to the Queen, after all, would be something like an elected president. In a country whose politics are defined by degrees of anti-Americanism, that would be a step too far.

Canadians are also almost robotically polite: if you knock one over in the street, he or she will invariably say 'sorry'.

Beneath that veneer, though, only around a third of Canadians are self-declared Monarchists.

But that minority is influential, whereas the indifferent majority generally do not regard the Crown as a major issue.

In surveys, matters such as unemployment and healthcare loom large for Canadians, while the Monarchy doesn't register. And as for the Queen herself – and, it would appear, her grandson and his wife – it is hard to find any glimmer of dissent.

But that does not appear to extend to Charles. He has visited Canada almost as often as his mother, but with growing indifference and disdain from Canadians.

During his last trip in 2009, he and Camilla launched a tour with a much-publicised appearance in the wind-battered seaside town of Cupids, Newfoundland.

Just 57 people were there to witness it – not even a tenth of the town's population. The rest of the visit was a spectacle of indifference – a possible portent of a future Canada.

That's why the House of Windsor is taking this eight-day visit by the newlyweds so seriously: it is a chance to win back the devotion of a country that is willing to give the Monarchy the benefit of the doubt. 

And where Canada goes, perhaps the rest of the realm will follow.