The Canadian way with national anthem dust-up

Among the characteristics, both large and small, that separate Canadians from Americans must surely be their attitudes toward their respective national anthems.

The Americans belt out The StarSpangled Banner with deep passion. They sing of the “rocket’s red glare” and “bombs bursting in air.” We, in contrast, shuffle our feet and murmur about “true patriot love” and “glowing hearts.”

The U.S. anthem’s second verse highlights “havoc of war” and “blood” washed from “foul footsteps.” Ours offers up “stalwart sons” and “gentle maidens.”

It’s like they’re the Klingons and we’re Federation pacifists.

And today, Americans are twisting themselves into fever pitch over whether or not to #TakeTheKnee during the singing of the anthem now that President Donald Trump says they shouldn’t. Canadians, meanwhile, are quietly tolerating, after months and months and months, a dull debate among parliamentarians on whether to change two words in O Canada.

Bill C-210 — you may remember this one, introduced by the late OttawaVanier MP Mauril Bélanger back in January, 2016 — proposes morphing “all thy sons” into “all of us” and is the latest in a long line of attempts to modernize Canada’s anthem. Sadly, notes Sen. Frances Lankin, who is sponsoring the bill in the Red Chamber (it did finally pass the Commons in June 2016), “It’s not going anywhere fast at the moment.”

Why not? Last week, as Parliament returned from the summer break, senators endured yet more procedural wrangling over the lyrics of the national ditty, which is currently foundering on an amendment put forward last June by Tory Sen. Lynn Beyak (recently notorious for other reasons).

As a consequence, the bill isn’t moving forward.

“As part of the feminist community, waiting 30 years to see this change,” Lankin finds it “extraordinarily frustrating” that the Senate can’t get the bill to a third-reading vote.

She says this even while noting that those who feel strongly against changing the lyrics have valid points to argue, too, about historical tradition and so on. It’s the process — the stalling, the procedural tactics, the deliberate prevarication — that dismays her.

How Canadian. A senator painstakingly concedes that there may be more than one reasonable point of view in a political debate. Meanwhile, south of the border, the president yelps at NFL owners to fire any “son of a b---” who uses the anthem as a form of protest, and an American actor says “F— you” to Trump as the class wars burn.

But wait, fellow citizens! We have had our share of anthem controversy — Canadian style. This newspaper in 1967 carried a Canadian Press photo of former mayor Charlotte Whitton refusing to rise at a public event when O Canada was played: She was likely protesting the Pearson government’s adoption of the motion that led to its becoming the official anthem. A whole lot of Canadians didn’t like the tune supplanting God Save the Queen — which stuck around as the royal anthem, in a typically Canadian compromise.

Whitton wasn’t exactly “Taking The Knee” in the sense American athletes and other celebrities now are, but she was a well-known figure and sitting on her bum didn’t go unnoticed.

Would anyone do it today, say, to protest our current male-centric lyrics? Nope. Feminists tell me when the anthem is played, they simply sing the “new” lyrics anyway.

All very reasonable. All very Canadian.