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O Canada: We don't stand on guard for thee
By ANDREW CADDELL
Friday, June 24, 2005 Page A21
On June 24, 1880, in Quebec City, Canada's national anthem O Canada was first performed. The reception to the song was warm: "This anthem has a masterful character and when sung by a great number of voices creates a most impressive effect," wrote one of the 500 people gathered for a celebration of "La fête de St. Jean Baptiste." A century later, in May 1980, in the wake of the federalist victory in the Quebec referendum when Canadians were looking to express their love of country, the song was proclaimed Canada's anthem. When the bill passed third reading, MPs stood as a boisterous version was sung a cappella.
In this double anniversary year, one might expect some celebration. Perhaps a 125-member choir at Stanley Park, a rock band on Signal Hill or a symphony on the Plains of Abraham, as we all join together to sing, O Canada! Terre de nos aïeux. . . Instead, the sound you hear today is the sound of silence.
What a national disgrace. Elsewhere, national anthems are commemorated. Not in Canada.
One can only speculate as to why.
The silence may be due to our ignorance of the story of O Canada. The music was written by one of the great composers of the era, Calixa Lavallée, who had studied in France and in the United States, and served as a musician in the American Civil War. When wounded, he returned to work as a choirmaster and organist in Quebec City and was pressed to write an anthem for French Canada by a number of notables in the city.
After three frustrating efforts, he got the tune right. Then Adolphe-Basile Routhier, a judge and well-known writer, went to work on lyrics. Although the first verse is a hymn of patriotism and religious zeal -- Car ton bras sait porter l'épée, il sait porter la croix -- the succeeding verses are tributes to the dedication of the Canadiens to their homeland.
The rest, as they say, is history. The anthem was launched a few months later and grew in acclaim over the years. It is notable that both English and French lyrics were written in Quebec: Routhier's in 1880 and the English refrains by Judge Robert Stanley Weir in 1908, in the Eastern Townships. Although many English versions of O Canada emerged, it was Weir's version that took hold, in spite of -- or because of -- its familiar redundancy, to "stand on guard for thee." The "True North strong and free" seemed to express how Canadians saw their new country.
Fast forward to July of 1980. Once the anthem was proclaimed on Canada Day by governor-general Edward Schreyer, a public ceremony was held on Parliament Hill in front of thousands of Canadians, including descendants of Weir and Routhier. Choirs sang out across Canada that day. A mere quarter of a century later, it is hard to believe that we have forgotten all this.
What does it say of us? It has become a Canadian cliché to laugh about how few of us know our history. But if modern Canada is the sum of its people, its values are also the sum of its history.
Our leaders proclaim Canadian "values" while reciting a laundry list of popular policies -- medicare, equalization, regional development or the Charter. But policies are not values, just as promises don't offer vision. For shared values and a vision, we need look no further than the enduring lyrics of O Canada. They speak of sacrifices for freedom, of love of the land, of winter, of loyalty to a just cause and our sense of community, as well as our welcoming of others.
In the heat of the 1995 referendum, Lucien Bouchard claimed Canada was "not a real country." While I would argue our post-modern pluralism is a vast improvement over the ethnocentrism of traditional nation-states, we have still not developed a common understanding of who we are. And if we fail to develop that willingness to sculpt a shared nationhood, Mr. Bouchard will be proven right.
John Diefenbaker liked to say, "There can be no dedication to Canada's future without a knowledge of its past." Recognizing, and celebrating, the anthem that expresses who we are would be a start.
So -- Happy Birthday/ Joyeuse Fête, O Canada.
Andrew Caddell, a consultant on UN affairs at Foreign Affairs Canada, lives in Ottawa and Kamouraska, Que
