High, wide and anthem

Parliament reopened this week - did anyone notice that it had been closed? - and one of Stephen Harper's first moves was to propose a change to the wording of the national anthem. For those of you not in the know, O Canada begins with the lines:

O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command

According to the government, the anthem should be gender neutral, so the proposition was to replace the second line with 'True patriot love in thou dost us command', a line which comes from the 1908 poem on which the anthem is based.

There has been a huge public outcry against such a change though, and the government has now admitted that its policy was wide of the mark and has backed down, which is a good job as it's taken me almost five years to learn the words as they currently stand; and besides, for an upwardly mobile and forward looking country such as Canada - we own our own podium now, you know - incorporating the words thou and dost into the anthem is so, well, last century.

Speaking of anthems, I've always thought that the UK should ditch God Save The Queen in favour of one that actually refers to the country rather than an individual person. Land Of Hope And Glory would seem to be the obvious choice, but it would have to be the version that gets played at the Last Night of the Proms, which incorporates the whole of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1. Just imagine the scenes at the 2012 Olympics if this were to become reality; every time a Brit won a gold the medal ceremony would become a riotous celebration replete with streamers, party poppers, silly hats and a full choir. Unbeatable...



...unless, of course, Canada adopted I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK as its anthem. Now, that would be a medal ceremony worth watching.