The Maple Leaf? Whatever!

You've got to admit, Canada is a country unlike many others.  After putting together a closing show for the Olympics that was so full of Canadian in-jokes and somewhat Canadian (but resident in America) stars making those jokes, a show so obscure that most Americans rated it as lame or boring, we are now exposing ourselves by arguing about the National Anthem, of all things.  I find the whole thing somewhat amusing, but in a head-hanging, squirming kind of way.

American friends, when Parliament opens a new session our Governor General reads a Speech from the Throne, written by the current political party in power. In the speech of a few days ago, the government caused the Gov. Gen. to announce that we would review our national anthem with a view to cutting out the sexist and offensive elements therein.  This only a few days after the country had gone mad singing the thing as our athletes won medals.  How lame brained was that? 

Two days later, the government backed off and said it would not do the review after all, mostly because their mail, phones and email had all become clogged with people telling them that this was a really, really stupid idea.  Meanwhile, anyone that could not get through to their MP and, I suspect, a few who did, wrote a letter to the editor.  I have just finished reading Saturday's batch, plus a few articles by various pundits, and I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

So, what is all the fuss about.  It seems to have started with a female senator who complained that the anthem as is was not inclusive of women.  The first two lines, you see, are:

Oh, Canada, our home and native land,
True patriot love in all thy sons command.

Leaves out the daughters. Tsk.  Cannot have that.  I note in passing that it also leaves out any new Canadian not actually born here, of either sex, but that did not seem to be the senator's problem.

Well, yes, both the men and the women did win hockey golds last week.  We noticed. When the women stood up to belt out the anthem, what I noticed was that several of them were singing different words.  You see, the anthem has been revised before, to smarten it up a bit, and a lot of people do not know the new words.  Not to mention that the French version has a different theme and different sentiments. 

The French version came first, back in the late 18th century, and English translations of it are just awful, without exception.  And so, around a hundred years ago, an effort was made to develop decent English words, to level the playing field a bit.  At that period, English Canadians were just as likely to be singing God Save the King or The Maple Leaf Forever, but Oh Canada got pushed forward and adopted as the official anthem because the other two were pretty annoying to French Canadians.  God Save the King for obvious reasons and The Maple Leaf Forever because the words you heard at the closing ceremony of the Olympics were not the words we used, even in the forties and fifties, when I was growing up.  The chorus runs:  The first verse, then, was:

In days of yore, from Britain's shore,

Wolfe the conquering hero came

and planted firm Britannia's flag

on Canada's fair domain. 

There may it wave, our boast our pride

and join in love forever. 

With lily, thistle, rose entwined,

the Maple Leaf forever.

At the time we all happily sang this ditty in Ontario schools, our flag was, in fact, the British red ensign.  Australia had the white one.  Or vice versa.  It was not until our centennial year, 1967, that we finally adopted, as a genuine, home grown Canadian flag, the red maple leaf you saw all of us wearing last week.  But you can see that our Francophone brothers and sisters would not be in love with those words, specifically because Wolfe was a British general who defeated a French army outside Quebec City and claimed the territory for England.

All of this is fine but the icing on the cake, for me, is the upwelling of support for the present English version of Oh Canada.  This from a nation of people whose athletes are singing different words in the English version and most of the Francophone gold medallists I saw were singing, kind of tentatively, also in English.  You can just bet they don't sing the French version much.  

I guess, as a good native daughter of Canada, I should just, with glowing heart, sing whatever words I can remember.

This is an orginal post for Canada Moms Blog.  Whenever she stops singing, Mary G can be found blogging at Them's My Sentiments.