Admittedly, my ability to be politically correct is practically nonexistent. No, I don’t go around dropping n-bombs every 20 seconds, but I haven’t rewritten a large part of my vocabulary to take into account some tiny fraction of the town I live in–who’s population isn’t all that large anyway–might be offended either. And I have no plans to. I also have no plans to do any kind of supporting the latest gem to come out of Ottawa’s parliament.
In yesterday’s throne speech, it was suggested that Canada’s national anthem needs a tiny bit of reworking. Um, what? Specificly, the part that says “all our sons command”. Again, um, what? Now our very own anthem isn’t gender-neutral enough? There’s accomodation and then there’s just overkill. That, well, is just overkill.
It’s been a complete non-issue for as long as I can remember, in spite of the fact we’ve had multiple governments with their own ideas on gender neutrality come in and screw up the country in their own ways. It’s been pretty much exactly the same in that respect, too. Except in the last decade or two it’s been forced bilingual all across Canada, except maybe in Quebec–do they even still sing that one? And now, after it’d been played about 50 billion times during the olympics, there’s talk of rewriting it for gender-neutral purposes. Someone wanna tell them drugs are bad for you?
Hey, if we’re going to rewrite the thing anyway, here’s a thought. Let’s remove or modify that whole “God keep our land” section while we’re at it. Don’t want to offend the non-Christian folks either. Or, you know, we could leave well enough alone and be happy with not having to sing “God save the queen”. I would vote for that option, too. It’s the national anthem–as much a part of Canada as hockey and beer. Don’t mess with it.