If you already know our national anthem you may soon have to remember all new words for it. Parliament is looking into the idea of changing some of the lyrics to a more gender neutral wording. This was announced during the throne speech given on Wednesday by Michaelle Jean. Some of the wording in question comes from the line where it states ‘in all thy sons command’; people are interested in rewriting that line into something more inclusive.
The original song was written in 1880 by Calixa Lavallee and in 1980, one hundred years later, the song became our national anthem. Over the years the there have been many variations of lyrics but it was the 1908 lyrics written by Stanley Weir that was chosen by parliament in 1980. The lyrics though had a few lines that were added to by the parliament at the time. We adopted the national anthem as a replacement for ‘God save the Queen’.
There is no clue yet as to who proposed the idea originally and the news has most of parliament talking.
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