This morning while reading the papers I discovered that Canada has two different and distinct national anthems. One in French and one in English. This is not about the difference in terminology, the two anthems (sung at hockey game every Wednesday night) actually have very different thematic.
The French version is a poem written by a guy called Adolphe-Basile Routhier in 1880. It remains today largely unchanged from its original text. The English version is "regularly revised" by the Federal parliament. What is truly amusing is that as a bi-lingual Canadian I never eve noticed the different texts. Of course nobody ever talks about this, the only reason its a topic of conversation is that last week in the "Throne Speech" the governor general (Queens representative to the Canadian Government) mentioned that the government was thinking of modifying the English version to remove "Sons" and add something more inclusive and less gender specific.
Nothing really big here, except that the Conservative "electorate" decree this as a crime against humanity. How dare the government changing the words of the Canadian anthem, it has remain unchanged now for nearly....15 years. Needless to say that the government back down from this idea as fast as you can say: Pussywipped!
Anyway, another example of the two solitudes: We have two national anthems in Canada, they don't talk about the same thing, but they rhyme.
The French version is a poem written by a guy called Adolphe-Basile Routhier in 1880. It remains today largely unchanged from its original text. The English version is "regularly revised" by the Federal parliament. What is truly amusing is that as a bi-lingual Canadian I never eve noticed the different texts. Of course nobody ever talks about this, the only reason its a topic of conversation is that last week in the "Throne Speech" the governor general (Queens representative to the Canadian Government) mentioned that the government was thinking of modifying the English version to remove "Sons" and add something more inclusive and less gender specific.
Nothing really big here, except that the Conservative "electorate" decree this as a crime against humanity. How dare the government changing the words of the Canadian anthem, it has remain unchanged now for nearly....15 years. Needless to say that the government back down from this idea as fast as you can say: Pussywipped!
Anyway, another example of the two solitudes: We have two national anthems in Canada, they don't talk about the same thing, but they rhyme.
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