Memorial continuing to pause ‘The Ode’
The university has decided to continue the pause in singing the “Ode to Newfoundland” at convocation.
The rationale for this appears to be the same as that for the original decision: that Labrador is not included, that God is mentioned, that there is no reference to Indigenous peoples. More recently, there have been reports that the “Ode” is considered to be a product of a colonial mind from a colonial time and, as such, is to be condemned.
When the no “Ode” was sprung upon convocation last fall, it was done surreptitiously and, it appears, at the behest of a president who has since been dismissed for, in part, misleading the search committee, the Senate and Regents in the matter of her origins – a matter which was, reportedly, influential in her appointment.
It does not appear that any substantial research was done on the history of the “Ode” by the president or her advisors. Indeed, it would appear that they may not have read the “Ode” for, in its four stanzas, there is little that can cause offence in its general subject matter – the natural world of Newfoundland as seen in its seasons, weather and landscape.
If it is put beside other anthems with their jingoism and appalling violence (UK “Scatter his enemies/and make them fall,” France “To arms, citizens!/ …/Let’s march/ That their impure blood/ Should water our fields”) then the “Ode” is a model of eco-patriotism, an attitudinal guide, and not a text to be suppressed.
It was written by Sir Cavendish Boyle, then-governor of Newfoundland, introduced to a St. John’s audience in January 1902 and was so well received that one local newspaper thought it likely “to become our national anthem.”
While this official process was in train by the time Boyle left Newfoundland in 1904, it was only formally enacted by the province’s House of Assembly in 1975. The “Ode” was one of Boyle’s gifts to Newfoundland.
That said, the “Ode” could do with revision to be more inclusive, to address current sensitivities, but such revision is not addressed by ill-considered exclusion or wholesale elimination. And such revision, the “Ode” being subject to an act of the legislature, should come from the legislature, not a diktat of the president’s private cabinet.
Furthermore, if the idea of a national anthem is unacceptable, then both “O Canada” and “God Save the King” must also be removed from the convocation program.