In this day and age, gender-neutrality and feminism are hot topics. You don’t know what to say and what offends people. Well apparently Canada’s national anthem ‘O Canada’ wasn’t gender-neutral and it’s lyrics, which have stood since it became their national anthem in 1980, are being changed.
After decades of efforts to replace the phrase “all thy sons” with “all, us of” a bill has finally been passed. The line “in all thy sons command” is believed to come to be discriminatory and is being changed to “in all of us command”. This apparently better expresses the modern values of the country.
Although the majority of Canadians probably didn’t care about the original lyrics, it has in fact been a fiercely debated legislation and a total of 12 bills have been introduced to the House since 1980 attempting to change the word ‘sons’.
The change has come under some opposition with a fair few of the public expressing their dissatisfaction with the new line and as to why the Senate are wasting time voting on bills like this.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau however was fully aboard the lyric change and hailed it as “another positive step towards gender equality”.
If you think the madness surrounding gender-neutrality is bad here, check out the panic after Sweden said God has no gender!