People seem to care about the national anthem more than I thought. With the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series, “O Canada” has been getting a lot of screen time over the past week. JP Saxe’s rendition of “O Canada” at Game 3, where he sang, “Our home on native land,” like Jully Black did at the NBA All-Star game in 2023, ruffled feathers — as did Rufus Wainwright’s lyric change when performing the anthem for Game 5, singing, “That only us command” to protest Trump’s 51st state comments like Chantal Kreviazuk did at the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament.
Some have taken issue with other elements of these performances from a more technical vocal execution standpoint (or, in Wainwright’s case, getting some of the French words wrong). Then there are folks like Raffi, who seems to be more concerned with Saxe’s melodic changes to the anthem, as if the first judges’ advice given to contestants covering a song on any singing show isn’t “make it your own.”
The same thing happens lyrically on these programs, when contestants (annoyingly) change the pronouns in a song in a lyrical expression of “no homo!” But the point is, altering the source material is an opportunity for an artistic to reflect on what they’re actually singing, rather than just reciting something by rote: what do these words actually mean, and why are they worth saying?
“We’re losing the ancient texts” is the response many of the extremely online are having when someone makes some sort of commentary, seemingly without acknowledging a previous related meme that came before it. That’s how it felt seeing all kinds of conservatives decry Saxe for having the audacity to think he can change the anthem, with many seeming to not remember — or have ever known about — Black doing it in 2023, despite the fact that it was a pretty big national news story at the time.
The sense of the “O Canada” lyrics being sacred to people has taken me aback. Personally, I’m interested in all these artists using the national anthem as an opportunity for political commentary, even through the slightest alterations to the lyrics, which were written over 100 years ago. Beyond the historical importance of the national album as a broad concept, putting together words and music that somehow represent the essence of a nation, who is “O Canada” resonating with these days?
Changes have already been made to the anthem, which did not formally become such until 1980, decades after its conception: in 2018, legislation was enacted to have the English lyrics formally altered from “in all thy sons command” to (the admittedly kind of clunky, but well intentioned) “in all of us command” in the name of gender parity.
If you want to go even deeper into the history of the evolution of “O Canada,” we have to go back to 1880, when it was commissioned by Théodore Robitaille, the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, for a performance also meant to honour the National Congress of French Canadians at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day celebrations that year. Calixa Lavallée composed the music, to go with a poem written in French by Adolphe-Basile Routhier.
When the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (King George V and Queen Mary) toured Canada in 1901, they helped introduce the song to the country’s English-speaking population. Robert Stanley Weir’s 1908 English adaptation of the lyrics gradually became the most popular interpretation, and were made the official version with the passing of the aforementioned National Anthem Act in 1980. (Notably, the French lyrics have remained unchanged since 1880.)
At a time when many south of the border are up in arms about Bad Bunny performing in Spanish at the Super Bowl, it’s interesting that the Republicans’ Canadian counterparts are so steadfast about the English lyrics to the national anthem — which, again, was originally written in French by a French-Canadian musician, on behalf of the Quebecois government — remaining unaltered. It’s a translation, and we know there are no exact ones.
So what’s so offensive about Black’s slight re-write, or Kreviazuk’s? The former feels a lot more urgent (and just works better phonetically), while the latter marks a more up-to-the-minute reflection on the year of 2025 and what it has meant to Canadians. The global stage is already aware of it; when the world is watching, why are we unwilling to be reflexive? Why won’t we evolve with the times?
All in all, a national anthem is a symbol more than a piece of music, and what people like Jully Black, Chantal Kreviazuk, JP Saxe and Rufus Wainwright are doing with it is simply what artists are supposed to do. As more and more gory details of our country’s history of colonial violence continue to be unearthed, for many of us, “O Canada” doesn’t evoke what it once did — which is exactly what makes Black’s subtle “Our home on native land” lyric change feel so meaningful, as a small act of refusal to continue the erasure of Indigenous peoples.
The true common denominator between the right and the left is that we all feel betrayed by the government’s false promises. The Indigenous population understands this on a level beyond most of our comprehension, having suffered atrocities at the Crown’s hands since so-called Canada’s inception. There’s more pride in acknowledging these injustices — and tapping into the camaraderie of a shared refusal to concede — rather than thoughtlessly continuing to recite words penned in 1908 that aspire to an impossibly utopian ideal.
“O Canada” should be a living document: continuously edited to reflect changing circumstances and new information about the nation it represents; on principle, that seems like a much more fitting credo than any vague gestures toward strength and freedom. Alternatively, we could just make “OK Blue Jays” the new anthem. All in favour say “aye”…
