Large Fierce Mammal

Maple leaf, still afloat though sweating from the effort. (Source: Getty Images)

If you ain’t from around here, you probably won’t know how many tweaks and revisions the national anthem of Canada — O Canada — has undergone since it was first performed, as a French poem set to music, on 24 June 1880. As with any popular patriotic song, it went through a series of translations, rearrangements, and rewrites until the first verse was adopted, in both official languages, as the national anthem of Canada by way of the National Anthem Act in 1980. That’s right — 1980. I mean, some of us old folks were even alive when that happened!

As recently as this very year, the Canadian Government under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has put its own mark on l’hymne national by changing the line, “‘True patriot love in all thy sons command’ to ‘True patriot love in all of us command,’ ensuring gender parity.  No change was required to the French version.” That last bit about the French version is because, well, Québec.

Even with his fixation on gender neutrality, inclusiveness, and diversity; each of which he utters with such wide eyed regularity as to render all three references meaningless, I still find Justin Trudeau inspiring. So much so that he inspired me to give you this.

Gods help us, every one.

Ode to an Anthem

By LFM

An anthem is a song that tells
The story of a land,
From birth up to the day it’s sung
Right where you proudly stand.

We’ve governments rewriting ours
So that’s not what it does,
Ours tells the nation’s history
The way they wish it was.

To make it gender neutral,
More inclusive and diverse,
By governance of wishful thought
It just keeps getting worse.

They’ll labour day and night to add
Another word or two —
Diverse and all inclusive rhymes
For LGBTQ!

A tempest in a teapot though,
And worthless great to-do —
Most asked to sing O Canada,
Will have no fucking clue.