From the BBC News:
O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The true north strong and free!
The government had said it was open to changing a lyric in O Canada – “in all thy sons command” – to the original version, “in thou dost us command”.
Opposition Liberals said the proposed change was merely a gimmick that proved the ruling Conservatives were not serious about women’s rights.
Public outcry was so strong PM Stephen Harper dropped the idea after two days.
“We offered to hear from Canadians on this issue and they have already spoken loud and clear,” said Mr Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas.
“They overwhelmingly do not want to open the issue. The government will not proceed any further to change our national anthem.”
The issue was raised after the anthem was played a record 14 times at gold medal ceremonies during the Vancouver Winter Olympics. …
I’m a little unclear on how “public outcry” was measured, frankly. But hey, at least those evil feminists didn’t get any traction, eh?
–Ann Bartow, via Bobc
Unfortunately it was palpably clear that there was no support for this change. The Prime Minister’s cabinet made it perfectly clear they wouldn’t support a change. Tons of media and online polls showed an overwhelmingly negative reaction to the idea. To be fair, it was clear from the beginning that the offer to change the anthem was a benighted effort to divert us from focussing on real change – this government has undermined pay equity, cut funding for women’s groups across the nation and for a Court Challenges programme that was likely one of the best tools we’ve ever had for challenging discriminatory legislation, done all it could to undermine women’s abortion rights, ignored the plight of hundreds of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and just generally done all it could to set us back by a decade. Changing a word in the anthem was never likely to impress us.
On the other hand, the media has reported that it was the Conservative “base” that was outraged. I don’t hang out with Conservatives but I heard nothing but howls of protest from my supposed progressive allies, mostly men, but women too. I was actually called a “femininazi” simply for saying I didn’t think it was a bad idea. We were offered a bright shiny thing that we never asked for and would never have thought of requesting. And got thrown directly under the bus for extending our hot, grubby little hands. Dispiriting to say the least. Was that the point of the exercise? Who knows. Our government is full of troglodytes and it’s hard to believe there are any neurons firing.