The Globe and Mail reports that a group of well-known Canadian women — including Margaret Atwood and Kim Campbell — have launched a campaign to make the lyrics of "O Canada" more gender neutral:
Here are the lyrics right now:
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
Of course, Canadians on social media have gone crazy with the usual flamewar over anything that has to do with changing "tradition". But the funny thing about "O Canada" is that its entire history has been one of change.
The original version, according to Wikipedia, was in French only. It was actually about Quebec patriotism, and was first performed on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in 1880.
The English version was, believe it or not, crowdsourced by Collier's Weekly magazine in 1908.
These were the winning lyrics, by Mercy E. Powell McCulloch:
O Canada! in praise of thee we sing;
From echoing hills our anthems proudly ring.
With fertile plains and mountains grand
With lakes and rivers clear,
Eternal beauty, thos dost stand
Throughout the changing year.
Lord God of Hosts! We now implore
Bless our dear land this day and evermore,
Bless our dear land this day and evermore.
This version, however, didn't "take". Instead, people turned to a much longer version written that same year by Justice Robert Stanley Weir, FRSC:
O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love thou dost in us command.
We see thee rising fair, dear land,
The True North, strong and free;
And stand on guard, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
Refrain
O Canada! O Canada!
O Canada! We stand on guard for thee.
O Canada! We stand on guard for thee.
O Canada! Where pines and maples grow.
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western Sea,
Thou land of hope for all who toil!
Thou True North, strong and free!
Refrain
O Canada! O Canada! etc.
O Canada! Beneath thy shining skies
May stalwart sons and gentle maidens rise,
To keep thee steadfast through the years
From East to Western Sea,
Our own beloved native land!
Our True North, strong and free!
Refrain
O Canada! O Canada! etc.
Ruler supreme, who hearest humble prayer,
Hold our dominion within thy loving care;
Help us to find, O God, in thee
A lasting, rich reward,
As waiting for the Better Day,
We ever stand on guard.
Refrain
O Canada! O Canada! etc.
Seeing as all those lyrics would inappropriately delay the puck drop at hockey games, the later stanzas were dropped.
Wikipedia says the fourth stanza was actually added in 1926 by Justice Weir, but the citation link is dead. Interestingly, official Canadian sources for lyric changes are hard to come by. Perhaps this is due to the fact that "O Canada" didn't actually become our national anthem until 1980.
Yeah, really.
Maybe that's because the anthem kept changing. "In all thy sons' command" replaced the mouldy old "dost" language sometime in the early 20th century. The version I sang in school, prior to 1980, went something like this:
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
We stand on guard,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
Does anyone else remember that? My Dad refused to sing the new lyrics to his death. I was just upset they stuck religion into a perfectly functional secular anthem.
But the changes didn't stop there. Toronto city council, on behalf of that city's large immigrant population, tried to get the first line changed from "our home and native land" to "our home and cherished land" and "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command."
As recently 2010, Governor General Michaëlle Jean asked parliament review the "original gender-neutral wording of the national anthem" in her Throne Speech. It didn't happen.
So, if you're getting all wound up about "political correctness", consider that "O Canada" is not the set-in-stone patriotic tradition you might have thought it was. Like Canada, it keeps changing to adapt to the wants and needs of Canadians.
That said, I still think we should adopt this as our anthem:
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