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OTTAWA — For a brief moment, Mauril Bélanger’s eyes smiled, a rainbow in the storm of his life.

His private member’s bill to make the lyrics of O Canada gender neutral passed third reading Friday in the House of Commons, making the vote next Wednesday a formality.

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By Canada Day, the official national anthem lyrics will likely read “in all of us command,” instead of “in all thy sons command.” (The bill will still need Senate approval before passing into law).

But 24 hours earlier, the bill was in peril, as Conservative MPs refused to give their consent to allow another member to sponsor the legislation in the Ottawa Vanier MP’s absence.

Bélanger has ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and is confined to a wheelchair.

The request from government whip Andrew Leslie was made because there were real doubts about whether Bélanger was going to make it to the House.

Yet there he was — mouth paralyzed, the occasional flicker of his eyes the only sign he was still with us. He entered quietly during the debate but was hailed by his colleagues with a series of standing ovations.