Senators: don’t block progress

When the House of Commons voted last year to change two words in “O Canada,” it seemed to resolve a 30-year struggle.

After countless failed campaigns, motions and bills, those who view our anthem as a living symbol that ought to evolve along with our values appeared finally to have prevailed. “In all thy sons command” would become “in all of us command,” and all Canadians would at last be included in the song.

But one should never count out the opposing camp in this endless conflict. Those who view our anthem as a historical artifact that above all must be preserved constitute an equally large and vociferous group — one that, crucially for the future of the anthem, contains a number of senators.

These legislators are now mounting a last stand, threatening to allow the bill to languish in its final reading in the Upper House, almost a year after the elected Members of Parliament approved it. They argue that the change represents political correctness run amok, that it is an affront to tradition and that the proposed new lyrics would be an ungrammatical blight on the anthem. They are wrong on all counts. First, the notion that we should continue to do something simply because we have always done it that way is a dangerous fallacy. This logic has been used to preserve some of the worst relics of antediluvian times.

Our social attitude toward women has changed substantially over the century since the English words of “O Canada” were written. Only extremists would say this process has not been favourable. These lyrics are sung by hundreds of thousands of us every day; we demand that our children learn them by heart. Surely they should evolve to reflect sentiments we can stand behind, rather than harden into a permanent, illiberal anachronism.

Second, to change the lyrics of “O Canada” would be a tribute, not an affront, to tradition. The words to our anthem are hardly set in stone. They have been rewritten at least 25 times before. In fact, the original lyric of 1908, “thou dost in us command,” was genderneutral. Six years later, Robert Stanley Weir changed it to the more mellifluous but less inclusive current version. If our senators want to insist on a perverse anthemic originalism, why not go all the way?

Third, if the proposed change is ungrammatical, then so, too, is the current version; they take the same syntactic form. Some senators also argue that the proposed lyric is clunky, a result of lawmakers’ lack of literary skill. “Politicians are not usually poets,” said Joan Fraser, a Liberal appointee and former journalist. True enough, yet one of our most noted poets, Margaret Atwood, has been forcefully advocating the proposed new wording for years.

In any case, if the concerns were truly literary in nature, surely the Senate could recommend an amendment. Rather, the pedantry seems to stand in for more troubling attitudes — an automatic opposition to change, for instance; or worse, nostalgia for less enlightened times. “This is just change for the sake of change,” said Conservative Sen. Michael MacDonald, change that caters “to a very narrow group of people who want to impose their agenda on everything.” That sounds like the gripe of a man being left behind.

The current legislation was put forward by former Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger, who died last year. In defence of his proposal, he argued rightly that we ought to “continually test our assumptions, and indeed our symbols, for their suitability.” He was right, too, that “our anthem can reflect our roots and our growth.”

“O Canada” is not a museum piece; we use it every day. It ought to be a song we can believe in. Senators should get out of the way.

‘O Canada’ is not a museum piece; we use it every day. It ought to be an inclusive anthem that we can believe in