Children sing O Canada at the Baitul Islam Mosque in Vaughan, Ont., during Canada Day festivities in 2016.COLE BURSTON/The Canadian Press
While the country will celebrate it’s birthday next week, O Canada got a head start on Friday, celebrating its 45th year as the official national anthem.
While it was often used as the de facto national anthem for years, O Canada was officially adopted through the National Anthem Act on June 27, 1980.
A few days later, on Canada Day, the Act was proclaimed by Gov. Gen. Edward Schreyer at a public ceremony on Parliament Hill in front of thousands of Canadians, making O Canada an official national symbol.
The song actually has existed for more than a century, though its lyrics have changed several times over the decades.
Commissioned to mark Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day celebrations in Québec on June 24, 1880, O Canada’s music was composed by Calixa Lavallée and its French lyrics were written by Adolphe-Basile Routhier.
While many different English versions of the song emerged as it grew in popularity across the country, the most well-known English lyrics were written in 1908 by Robert Stanley Weir, a lawyer and judge.
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The Government of Canada website says the lyrics of the official French version have remained unchanged since 1880.
Weir’s English lyrics underwent several modifications over the decades on their way to becoming the official English version. Previous versions of the song included closing lines like “Defend our rights, forfend this nation’s thrall” and “Bless our dear land this day and evermore.”
Some lines were changed more than once. In 1913 the original line “True patriot love thou dost in us command” became “True patriot love in all thy sons command.” In 2018 that line changed again to “in all of us command.”
The Canadian Encyclopedia says discussions about discriminatory aspects of the anthem, including the gender-exclusive use of the word “sons,” began in the 1950s.
Former Liberal member of Parliament Mauril Bélanger, who pushed to drop “sons” from the lyrics for years while battling ALS, introduced a private member’s bill in 2016 to change the line.
It was approved in the House of Commons as Bill C-210 a month later by a vote of 225 to 74. It wasn’t until 2018 — after several debates in the Senate and after Bélanger had passed away — that the change became official when the bill became law.
The new gender-neutral lyric received mixed reviews and Conservative senators abstained from the final vote in 2018.
While the original manuscript of “O Canada” no longer exists, there are two copies of the first edition. One is held in the archives of the Séminaire de Québec and the other is at the Université de Montréal.
