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Calixa Lavallée, a Quebec composer, wrote the music to O Canada for a St. Jean Baptiste Party in Quebec City in 1880. A Montreal judge, Adolphe Basile Routhier, wrote the French words.

In 1901, English Canada first heard the song when an infantry band played an instrumental version in Toronto for a visit by the Duke and Duchess of York. Canadians then began to compose their own English lyrics.

It took until 1927 for this task to be accomplished. The government of William Lyon Mackenzie King sought to publish English words to O Canada for Canada’s Diamond Jubilee, in 1927.They had a lot of versions to choose from. Emma Powell McCulloch had composed a version that went, “O Canada! In praise of thee we sing; from echoing hills our anthems proudly ring.” MendelssohnChoir in 1907 sang, “0 Canada! Our fathers’ land of old.”

At a 1915 memorial service in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral, for Canadians who had fallen in the battle of Ypres, a choir sang, “O Canada! Thy land of noble name.” Vancouver’s Canadian Club in 1925 sang, “O Canada, our heritage, our love. Thy worth we praise all other lands above.” (Clunky, but gender neutral!)

King chose a 1916 version of the English words, written by Montreal judge Robert Stanley Weir: “O Canada! Our home and native land. True patriot love in all thy sons command.” (That was Weir’s own rewrite of his 1908 version, “True patriot love thou dost in us command.”)

In 1980, Parliament rewrote the song again, switching out the first “and stand on guard” to add “from far and wide.” The first “O Canada, glorious and free” became “God keep our land, glorious and free.” A committee of parliament recommended these changes after its members read more than 1,000 letters from Canadians expressing their views on the lyrics.