True patriot love: the evolving words of Canada's national anthem
Changes to English lyrics to O Canada were proposed decades before they happened
Many schoolkids hear the words to O Canada regularly, but most other Canadians don't — unless they happen to be watching a sporting event.
So this Canada Day, perhaps they can be forgiven for not remembering the 2018 update to the English lyrics.
That change substituted the gender-neutral line "in all of us command" for the erstwhile "in all thy sons command."
And that particular change was decades in the making.
The debate begins
Years before O Canada became the official anthem in 1980, the English lyrics were up for debate.
In 1974, Ken Mason reported, the government was acting on a movement begun during Canada's centennial year, 1967, to settle on O Canada as the official anthem.
The sticking point was the Robert S. Weir lyrics, which were still under copyright.
Back then committee members felt there were just too many repeats of "stand on guard for thee" and the anthem remained unofficial.
When the government obtained the rights to the lyrics, they were open to change, and the slow and steady march to formal approval was underway.
'God keep our land'
Just in time for the country's national day in 1980, and 100 years after the song's genesis, Parliament made O Canada official on June 27.
A rather sparse group of MPs in the House of Commons stood to sing it after all parties agreed to pass the law that would be proclaimed in a ceremony later that week, on Dominion Day.
- CBC ARCHIVES | O Canada becomes official national anthem in 1980
"Some of the wording should be changed," said Secretary of State Francis Fox, who had ushered the bill through. "Some of these concerns, Madam Speaker, centre on the words 'sons' and 'native land,' which many would like to see replaced."
He suggested "native land" might become "cherished land."
NDP Leader Ed Broadbent supported removing the "obvious masculine bias" implied by the word "sons."
Reporter Mark Phillips noted the new anthem would have "one less 'stand on guard for thee.'"
"A 'from far and wide' will be substituted," he said.
Unmentioned by Phillips was another change before the phrase "glorious and free." Until then, it had been "O Canada." The new line was "God keep our land."
What would the Famous 5 sing?
Despite Fox's stated intentions in 1980, the phrase "all thy sons" was still official 21 years later.
The Famous 5 Foundation, named for the group of women who fought to get Canadian women the vote, thought the time had come to change that.
"Some think 'all thy sons' excludes half the population," said reporter Mike Wise.
"Many women, and many fathers of daughters, have told us yes, they stop singing O Canada when they come to that line," said the foundation's Frances Wright.
Support for the petition wouldn't come from the prime minister, Jean Chrétien. But a Canadian senator, Vivienne Poy, stood behind it.
"As a symbol, it should reflect Canadian society," she said. "At the moment, it really doesn't."
The urge for change did not go much further, though.
"Do we have to revisit things every 20 years, and put the up-to-date political correctness into our anthem?" asked Canadian Alliance MP Peter Goldring.
The Chipewyan challenge
The tune for O Canada and its French lyrics were written in 1880, and in 1908 Weir wrote his English lyrics.
And in 2002, a group in Yellowknife set to the task of making a version in Chipewyan.
The Indigenous language is spoken by communities in the Northwest Territories and the northern stretches of the three prairie provinces.
"Even the first step, which was to take the English words ... we were asking the question, 'what were they trying to say?'" said one of the trio working on the translation as the CBC's Snookie Catholique sat in on a translation session.
"Any time there's any effort or activity that involves aboriginal languages, there's a lot of laughing that goes on," the unidentified woman added. "It really lightens it. You can't get too serious about something like this."
Mauril Bélanger made it happen
When Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger was honorary Speaker for the day in March 2016, his fellow House of Commons members stood and sang the version of O Canada that he had proposed with a private member's bill back in January that year.
It was a re-introduction of his 2014 bill, which had been defeated in the last Parliament. He was advocating a further edit to 1980's official lyrics — changing "thy sons" to "of us," in a bid to make it gender-neutral and more inclusive.
As Terry Milewski reported on June 10, the day the bill was passed, there was opposition.
Conservative MP Peter Van Loan protested on behalf of those Canadians who were "shut out of the debate," and fellow party member Brad Trost refused to vote yes.
Trost's rationale was that in doing so, he would be "accepting that Canada would have been, in its words, discriminatory in the last 100 years."
The bill finally received royal assent in February 2018, when it became law.