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Group Seeks to Take 'Sons' Out of 'O Canada'
By Randall Palmer
OTTAWA (Reuters) - It's time to make ``O Canada'' politically correct, striking the phrase ``thy sons'' from the country's national anthem, a women's group said on Monday.
The Famous 5 Foundation, named after five women who won the right for women to become Canadian senators in 1929, launched a campaign on Monday to change some words of the anthem.
The group says the current wording excludes the daughters of Canada, and it is pushing for legislation to change the song, the first lines of which read:
``O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.''
The foundation, which started collecting signatures at a new Famous 5 Monument on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, says the line should read ``all of us'' or ``all our hearts.''
``Parents of children in Canada don't call their girl children 'sons','' foundation president Frances Wright said.
Just a couple hundred feet (meters) away, however, a random Reuters survey of a dozen Canadians watching the ceremonial Changing of the Guard on the Parliament lawn turned up nobody interested in changing the wording.
``I think that it's tradition, and we should just stick with it as it is. It's Canadian culture and history,'' Torontonian Cathy Vander Voort volunteered.
``I don't think it's sexist. It's history,'' said Marilyn Else of Toronto. ``Change isn't always good,'' said Lynn Anne Anfield of Cherry Valley, Ontario, who said she did not feel excluded.
Back at the monument, however, Aldo Cimpello signed the petition. ``It's just logical that it should be specific, and I guess the times have changed,'' he said.
But officials said Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien has no intention of moving on the file for now. ``Changing the words of the national anthem is not something we're looking at at this time,'' spokeswoman Marianne Goodwin said.
The anthem was actually written in French, Canada's other official language, in 1880. The French version avoids the gender problem by referring to ``terre de nos aieux'' -- ``land of our ancestors.'' The current English wording is based on an approximate translation done in 1908.
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