The Soft Parade

In All Thy [GENDER NEUTRAL] Command

Once again I’ve been caught up in the rat race that is life and neglected The Parade. It’s all with good reason mind you as these last few months have been quite the ride. The high-and-low of it all is that I am now engaged with a child on the way and have started a new job at Future Shop (Best Buy Canada) in New Minas, Nova Scotia. With all of that it’s been a little more difficult to find the time to put into ranting and musing online, but with my schedule ironing itself out a little more it seems I have some more time to get back to what I do best.

What brings me to the counter today is political correctness and how incorrect it actually is. There have been some rumblings over O’Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics that have reached all the way to parliament. “True patriot love in all thy sons command” is a line in our anthem and has been since 1908 when poet Stephen Weir wrote the poem to coincide with the 1880 composure by Calixa Lavallée. Now it appears that some find “thy sons command” to be sexist and are demanding change to something more “gender-neutral.” Perhaps they should change “true patriot love” as well since altering our national anthem doesn’t seem overtly patriotic to me.

The anthem was already changed by having a few lines added due to decisions by a joint-committee of MPs and senators in 1968 (adding “from far and wide” and “God keep our land glorious and free”) and is now in the crosshairs again. However, being a sensitive issue, politicians aren’t directly confronting the proposal directly and are in fact using the proposals as attacks on other political parties (naturally). “Anything that makes a national anthem more gender-sensitive is a good thing,” [Liberal leader] Michael Ignatieff told CBC News. “But, I mean, no disrespect to those who feel strongly on this issue, but, for heaven’s sake, we have some very important challenges and every time the government is asked to do something real, it does something symbolic.”

Have we come to a point in our culture where certain individuals are offended by our national anthem? If those people are offended by “all thy sons command,“ then they should probably start lobbying to change “mailman” and “manhole cover” to more gender-neutral phrases as well. Where does it end though? Will we have to go back in our history books and change “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind?” I wouldn’t be surprised in the least bit if that did become a valid argument within the next twenty years. Thank God Buzz Aldrin will have died of old age by then.

I’m a patriotic and law-abiding Canadian citizen and plan on being one until I pass on to the other side. But every time ridiculous lobby groups get just a little more of a foothold into our government, my patriotism goes down a notch… And I’m starting to run out of notches on my patriotism belt. So to all Members of Parliament, to Prime Minister Stephen Harper (of whom I could say some pretty negative stuff on), to all Canadians men and women alike… Please respect tradition and accept the fact that just because a word or phrase has “man” or “son” or any other masculine word in it that the English language and/or Canadian culture aren’t being sexist. If you’re that offended that easily though, chances are my plea is for nothing and you’ll start calling offense to my opinion on the matter. That’s just the way it goes.