O Canada

Every now and then, Canadians propose fiddling with their national song. Occasionally, the result actually becomes official. Usually, the suggested changes are small, dealing with, say, the gender specificity of " ... in all thy sons command." Nevertheless, verbal wars erupt over any suggestion.

Some veterans, for example, have gone so far as to fulminate that their comrades died for "O Canada" (presumably in its present text), which they mostly surely didn't considering that it has been Canada's national song (revised) only since July 1, 1980, and considering that they generally risked their lives for much wider and deeper reasons. In World War II they likely sang "God Save the King" at solemn occasions and "The Maple Leaf Forever" for more nationalistic feelings of solidarity.

However, I ventured in 1995, against this background, to try a much more thoroughgoing revision, and wrote the following in 1996. Why? Because I actually do care about the song and would like to mean what I sing when I sing it.

It's not that long since "O Canada" was rewritten, the result triggering in many of our minds the conviction that almost anyone could do better. Which conviction justified to me my decision to make a July First [Canada Day, 1995] project out of taking a hack at it myself.

The first problem I ran into was that neither I nor any of the friends I ran into during the day knew all the words of the first verse of the current version [this may surprise citizens of some other countries, but the song has been revised in the past, enough that many people have gotten confused; besides, reticence about belting it out is something of a Canadian trait, which leads to it being less well-learnt than, say, "The Star-spangled Banner"]. It was only in late evening that I finally heard a group of entertainers in Ottawa sing it so that I could fill in the last gaps.

O Canada, our home and native land ... [the official version begins] Crunch. It is far from being the native land of all of us. Few countries have so many immigrants - including myself. Furthermore, the mere word "native" profoundly annoys the First Nations peoples whose native land it was long before any Europeans managed to bear babies here. And "native land" also evokes the unsettled land claims of those peoples. Oh well, let's finish this couplet before dealing with that first line.

True patriot love in all thy sons command ... Great; having offended the earliest natives and the very large number of non-natives, we have now excluded the more than half of the remainder who are female. Fortunately, English has a great arsenal of good short words (a fact that Churchill loved and used to marvellous effect). For "sons" write "folk" -- and wonder why that wasn't done in the first place. "Patriot love" is not yet really a discredited idea, certainly not in patriotic songs, particularly if it is "true," as against various totalitarian perversions. But love is not commanded, it is earned. Two syllables, with the right meter ...

True patriot love in all thy folk inspire. What rhymes with "inspire"? Well, for instance, "fire," which evokes warm feelings and also the red of the flag. The gap in front of that monosyllable can be neatly filled with alliterative effect ...

O Canada, our home and our hearth-fire, Behold, serendipity! I have an image with the structure of the flag, red walls enclosing the flame-like red Maple Leaf, with side-references to the Autumn of the taking-fire of the eastern forests and, in the white ground, to the long cold of our Winter.

"Rise" is certainly an upward-looking word, but what does it mean here? I really do not know. Also -- you may think I am getting a bit niggly here, but I want to include all Canadians -- some of us are sight-impaired and cannot see this or anything else except in our minds. Furthermore, Canada is not the only far northern country; consider Russia, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the United States. Canada is not "the" true North, just our slice of it.

"Thee," which I really need to keep unless I'm going to drop the great punch line of the song, leads to the desirability of using the old second person singular throughout for consistency. This is not necessarily a disadvantage, provided I avoid getting sucked into "dost"s and "wouldst"s, and in this case gives me the opportunity of an internal rhyme ...

... and leaves an agreeable ambiguity about whether the country's heart or that of the singer is referred to. Besides, the red center of the flag is invoked again. Onward.

Provided, as I am, one is going to go with the major theme of the song as stated in its last line, then this couplet should still end with the first "on guard." But "from far and wide" now inverts the earlier problem, this time by excluding everyone who is a native of Canada, unless the phrase is taken as evoking the great size of the country. Better, I think, to use the hitherto untaken opportunity of explaining just why we are on guard. By another "command"? No, even in the feudal times in which the monarchies of which Canada remains one -- however irrelevant one may think that idea is -- originated, the social compact was basically, "You protect us, boss, and we'll fight under you (and pay taxes between times)." The inspired document with which our neighbors to the south founded their country puts it rather better, "To secure these rights ... governments are instituted ..." The opportunity arises, and should certainly be taken, for another internal rhyme:

You may again feel that I quibbled there; but not all of us can stand.

At this point the various writers and revisers of our national song have encountered a yawning hole. They have tended to fill it either with an almost ludicrous amount of standing guard, or with miscellaneous worthy thoughts. One of the problems with miscellaneous worthy thoughts is that they often reflect the personal beliefs of the thinker. This is how God gets into songs which did not start out as hymns, to the satisfaction of adherents of mainstream religions which have been the established ones of various of our ancestral lands. But the result is again exclusionary. Many of us have no deity, more than one deity, or even a deity not to be directly addressed or referred to by name. The current filling for the hole is

This combines both of the problems I mention above, and excludes an additional group, those who are monotheistic but do not assign to God the task of keeping individual countries glorious.

I choose instead to say some nice things about Canada; reasons, aside from the social compact, for which we might want to guard the country. What is Canada known for, favorably, in the world at large? For being a prosperous, generous, tolerant nation that seeks, not to conquer or command others, but instead to keep peace among them, sometimes at considerable cost to ourselves.

By this point I have sort of enslaved myself to internal rhymes; but that's not too tough with simple rhymes:

Great thy increase, champion of peace, I would like to write at this point, "Never to cease to stretch from sea to sea." But the sad circumstance is that I could conceivably, if Quebec separates and the Maritime Provinces go their own way, live to see a Canada in which the second "sea" would amount to no more than Ontario's and Manitoba's pieces of Hudson Bay [when I wrote this, possible separation by Quebec was much more lively an issue].

May I use a five-syllable word in a national song? Well, I certainly am going to use one.

Never to cease thy generosity; Time at last for the punch line.

O Canada, we are on guard for thee. And there you have it.

I sing my version and have the luxury of meaning exactly what I sing. This likely offends no-one, since I sing very quietly (because my sense of tone is wobbly enough that I tend to change keys from note to note) and, hopefully, people around me don't read my lips.

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