For all of those who are getting themselves all worked up over the whole "let's take a look at the National Anthem" thing, some words of advice.
1. Take a deep breath
2. Think very carefully about what is being proposed
3. Read up on some history
4. Repeat step 1 as required.
Anyone who knows me is aware that I am no friend of the P.C. language police. Proposals to rewrite the national anthem from a feminist perspective sat with me as well as changing the name of one of our provinces to Personitoba.
The version of O Canada that we are most familiar with is not the original version, nor is it even the first. Its not even a direct translation of the original French lyrics, which I personally think are much cooler than most of the English versions.
The current version was only proclaimed on July 1, 1980. Growing up, I recall a couple of different versions:
1. One version did not have:
"From Far and Wide, O Canada, we stand on guard for thee" in it
- it had "And stand on guard, O Canada, we stand on guard for thee."
2. "God Keep our Land Glorious and Free" wasn't in one of the version I learned in
Kindergarten either. It was "O Canada, Glorious and Free."
This was all prior to 1980, but not by much. Heck, most people don't even know that O Canada has more than one verse, much less what those verses are.
The PM is proposing to look back at some of the earlier versions as potentially being "more gender neutral" - guess what, several of them are. Can someone explain to me how looking back at these versions and giving consideration to potentially reviving one of them is disrespecting our heritage?
2 comments:
I, too, have gone back to review the original lyrics. As a schoolgirl, I had no problems with 'sons' - just assumed it was shorthand for 'sons and daughters' which would have been awkward, to say the least. It was interesting that the original lyrics were so gender neutral.
I suspect the furore about the possible change is because 1) most people have grown up with the 'all our sons' bit (does anyone know when that change happened?) and 2) there's so much feminist bitching about the current lyrics as excluding women.
I've never felt excluded by sexist language; obviously I'm seriously obtuse. But to those - and they are mostly women - who feel that way, my advice is 'get a life'. There's so many other causes that need defending.
Incidentally, did you notice that the Canadian women sang the anthem - sexist line and all - with gusto. It was the men who couldn't be bothered.
Exactly. Whats wrong with a little re-evaluation? People are against this idea in a knee jerk sort of way and its fine. Just fine. We're allowed to do this you know.
Canadians want to slam the door on feminists and so ok. That is end of the question.
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