August 5th: In which the clouds parted, having already shat everything they had in them.

            In the immediate aftermath of a disaster in which no one is hurt (and no one was), the sheer novelty of the situation fills one with an adrenaline that’s almost exciting. It’s only later, when one does not wake up in the comfort of one’s own bed, and is confronted with the permanence of the situation, that it really sinks in.

            I only had my Dark Side of the Moon boxer shorts; hell, even my wallet was still down there! So, first thing I suppose was to go get that replaced. I borrowed Dad’s jogging pants (about thrice my size) and trotted off to the bank to explain my situation.

            Every lawn in the neighbourhood had turned brown. The sidewalks, driveways and roads were coated with a layer of muck and clay about an inch thick, and a big musty cloud of gunk hung in the air. And I wasn’t the only one wandering about in a dazed state of “wtf?”.  Most of the block were out and about, looking for all the world like they'd been hit in the head with a brick. The clean-up hadn't started in earnest yet, but before the end of the week, every lawn and driveway would be filled with garbage and debris.  

            The next thing was to secure a pump and get that basement drained. It wasn’t just the creek water or the rain that got in; at some point the sewers backed up* and the house stank!**

My library. "Northern Frights 4" and
"100 Maths Homework Lessons"
remain discernable.

    

         I can’t remember how long it took to get all that water out (hey, it’s been a year!). I remember finally working up the courage to go down there and finding it, literally, a shitload worse than I imagined. In my incredible pre-flood naiveté, I had half believed that I’d find everything more or less as I had left it – soggy and muddy and shitty and useless, but more or less recognizable. No sirree!

            It was a dung pile. The bed had been picked up and thrown over there. The television had been picked up and thrown over there. The shelves had been shredded, my desk had been shattered. My library a mountain of goop.

            So. . .I had managed to save my manuscripts, my guitars, my laptop, my stuffed toys, a third of my records and most books with authors whose names started with the letter Z. What’d I lose?

        

    Well, pretty much whatever else I owned.  The other two thirds of my records. All of my cds, all of my cassettes (of which I still had and used hundreds). The Marantz amplifier. My credit cards. My lesson plans. Most of my clothes.  The library I’d spent my entire life building up. . .

            Put like that, it didn’t mean much. Statistics! It was only when one’s mind wandered to specifics did the heart begin to sink.

The yellow boom-box was property of the cleanup crew. 

            The autographed Essential Ellison? That was gone. My Ryerson ring? That was gone. My pirate boots? Gone. Godzilla 1985 on VHS? My Marx Brothers tie? My Jon Pertwee coffee mugs, my Ian Gillan records – from England???

           

            Gone. Gone. Gone. Vamoose. Washed away, dissolved. I no longer owned a proper suit, a winter coat, or a single pair of jeans. I didn’t have a bed to rest my head. All those books on my reading list, all those songs I thought I could hear any time, those movies I thought could watch forever, several hundred lesson plans I never thought I’d have to write again, all my band shirts. . .

           I hated to think of it then, and hate to think of it now. But go over that list and all you’ll see is missing is stuff. Things. And the wonderful thing about things are that they are replaceable. Granted, I’m not sure where I’ll secure another copy of Sir John, Eh? or The Heavens are Showing the Glory of Tchort , but, fact is, there was nothing down there I absolutely truly utterly needed. I hated to lose it, but most important thing was still here.

But the Jolly Roger still flew!

            I thought of that while wading through the muck in rubber gloves and Wellingtons. had I been stubborn, and stayed down there while the water was pouring in, or waded back in to gather more stuff,  I might very well have been caught under some of that debris - the flying desks, the floating shelves, the billion little bits swirling around in a current strong enough to toss a television – and been trapped down there. I may very well have lost my most irreplaceable self.

"The Who's Last" was, appropriately enough, the last record to be played on this turn-table. 

            Then I’d have a real reason to invoke Zola.

            To say nothing, that had any of that water gotten into the foundations of the house, it could have compromised the structural integrity of the building: the whole damn thing could have come down! As it was, the upper floors remained habitable, and a year later it's as good as new - rebuilt, almost, from the ground up.

            (Though my place is gone for good. . .)

            So, bad as it was, it could have been a whole lot worse. 

            No, the thing I missed most was privacy. The loss of personal space proved a hundred times worse than any of that crap down there. Until I could secure an apartment***, I had to sleep just off the kitchen, in full view of everyone including the workmen traipsing through in their safety boots.  Not having any place to go or any place to hide, any little enclosed area I could really call my own: that sucked.

 

Some things are unsinkable. . .

            My main memory of those days is sitting by rubbish heaps in the yard, jet-setting between couches and hotel rooms, and the smell of mud. I got to know some of the neighbours.  I will probably always associate Dostoevsky’s The Gambler with mud. I got another turn-table. I made the best of it.

            I might have been all washed up, but I was nobody’s wet blanket.        

If I could have chosen just one book to survive. . .

*(Turns out it was a rather good thing that it did: had it just been through the window, the insurance company would not have covered it. To my mind, the house would have been just as wrecked, but what do I know?)

**For which reason the insurers never doubted our claim.        

***Which also flooded. That’s another story. 

August 4th. . .in which when it rained, did it pour.

What a difference a year makes. . .

            Emile Zola once wrote a miserable little story called “The Flood” in which a man’s entire extended family drown in a flood. Personally, I thought some of the family members seemed awfully anxious to throw themselves into the flood waters – before (so it seemed to me) it was strictly necessary to do so - but what do I know?

            As it turns out, rather more than the average person. It was on this day one year ago when a raging flood largely destroyed my childhood home, and much of the rest of the neighbourhood. I did not lose any family members – mine, being rather more patient than Zola’s – but lost a great deal else.

           It was a very warm Sunday I remember. I had spent a larger part of the afternoon vacuuming the floors of my abode, having grown weary of the thick layers of dust that had settled there. I had rewarded completion of this onerous task with a leisurely game of Tripple A. I am aware there were a great many more sensible things I could have done with my time, but there you have it.

            It started to rain. Heavily. I took no notice.  But then a puddle started gathering in the back yard, and the rain kept falling and the puddle kept growing and some of us began to go “hmmm”.

            The memory gets a little hazy here. I think it was my brother who came in and said “you gotta see this.” I took off my shirt, not wanting it to get wet (and being perhaps more than a little vain), and followed him out into the pouring rain, to the creek about two doors down from the house, where some neighbours had gathered at the bridge. I dropped my jaw on my toes at this point and pinched myself for good measure. The waters had risen up the very edge of the bridge and were threatening to wash over it. This was a good ten feet above their normal level. I had never in my life seen them rise that high.

            I started taking things upstairs, expecting some leakage, but not much more than a damaged carpet. Electronics, like my laptop. My bass amp. Books off the bottom shelf. Precautionary measures, but no real panic. Then, the puddle in the back yard turned into a pool, and then the back yard itself turned into a pool. And the water kept coming.

           

            Again, memory grows hazy. The street was now a river, the water now rising up over people’s lawns and up to their front doors. At some point I stripped down to my underwear and swam out to check on the elderly neighbours. They were fine, if a little disconcerted by a half-naked neighbour appearing on their doorstep. Then it was back downstairs to save what I could before the water got in.

           

            

 

Footage courtesy of Brother Mike

Quick: all your worldly possessions are collected in one room, you have ten minutes to take what you can out of the room, after which every thing else gets trashed, starting . . . now!

           

            What do you take?

            I snatched up all my writings, my short stories and drafts. My journals, my tax-documents, my Doctor Who autographs and passports. My clippings from Ryerson. My stuffed toys, whom I’ve had from infancy, picture books I knew I couldn’t replace. . . All the while, my brother was applying duct tape to the windows to try and buy us time. We struggled to unplug Dad’s Marantz amplifier from the wall, a ten-ton behemoth he bought forty years ago, his pride and joy and our (we hoped) our inheritance. I couldn’t reach the friggin’ plugs. Then the windows above burst, and the water rushed in like a veritable Niagara, swallowing up the Marantz, and just about everything else in the room. Dave looked at me and I looked at him, and the realization hung telepathically in the air:    

            Give it up guys; you’ve lost.

            Even then I was able to snatch up some of my vinyl from beneath the cascade. I was walking around ankle deep (and rising!) in water, painfully aware off all the power bars and electrical outlets My bed started floating like from Winnie-the-Pooh, and I knew it was time to get the hell out of there.

            During this time they’d somehow managed to clear out the garage and get his car in away from the tides. Dad managed to shut off the power with a broom-stick. And just when I’m ready to stop and take a breath, Dave calls me over to the kitchen door. “Look at this,” he says.

            The water had risen past the ceiling, and all the way up to the head of the stairs. I could see bits of my books floating in a dark pool of stinky now-sewage tinged muck. The little basement study where I’d probably spent most of my life was now submerged under a cess-pool.

            “Close the door.” I said. What else could I say? When all else fails. . .

            I had just shut the door on my past. 

            I sat down on the couch and realized I was still in my underwear; in my haste, I hadn’t brought up any clothes. I didn’t even have the clothes on my back anymore. Just my Dark Side of the Moon Boxer shorts.

            I don’t much remember the rest of the evening. I think we cracked open a beer. What else could we do? 

Charlie's Angels: concerning the heroes, villains, apologists and enablers. . .

Well, there can be no denying: Charlie Hebdo is an obnoxious publication. Its illustrations are ugly, amateurish, juvenile, and just plain mean.

And that is utterly irrelevant.

When there are eleven people dead, the issue is not how offensive the cartoons were. It is so completely, utterly damned unimportant, it is barely worth mentioning. And yet, there are some people who not only think it worth mentioning, but think that that is the major issue.

In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, leaping at the heals of free-speech solidarity were the usual lapdogs of the “but brigade” – “killing is bad but. . .”

But what? Why is it so difficult to condemn a religiously based killing without all these conditionals?

My favourite was this little doozey from the Toronto Star.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/01/10/charlie_hebdo_attacks_not_just_about_cartoons.html

How can this be read as anything but a rationalization for the cold-blooded execution of eleven cartoonists? I’m sure they would balk at the suggestion, but why else would they insist that killings are about anything else? You will notice that not once, anywhere, do they suggest the killers were responsible for their own actions.  

It’s not even that alienation and integration et al are unimportant – they’re just incredibly irrelevant to this case. Vast swaths of people all over the western world find themselves alienated from greater society and yet don’t resort to picking up assault rifles and killing people. The article doesn’t do Muslims any favours either: inherent in its argument is a kind of infantalization of the Muslim community, suggesting they can’t control their actions, and will turn into rabid dogs when offended.

By way of refutation, might I point to the case of Mr. Ahmed Merabet, the Paris police officer executed by the gunmen (unmentioned, so far, in any of these articles). Merabet was a Muslim.  It didn’t do him any good: first they shot him in the leg. Then, as he raised his hands in surrender, they shot him in the head. These defenders of the faith hadn't a shred of mercy to spare for one of their own.

Officer Ahmed Merabet

Tell me: who is the enemy of the Muslim community?

I'm sure Mr. Merabet faced prejudice and intolerance. I am sure there were times he felt alienated from broader French society, and I'll bet he was offended by those cartoons. Nevertheless, he gave his life DEFENDING unarmed people.
He made a choice. His killers made a choice

Or, how about Mr. Lassana Bathily, the Muslim deli worker who hid Jewish customers while the gunmen went wild. I’m sure he faced prejudice and intolerance. I’m sure there were times he felt alienated from broader French society. I’m sure he was offended by those cartoons. But when the time came, he made his choice and chose his side: he decided to help people rather than kill them.

 

Lassana Bathily

We have a choice people. We decide how to interact with the world, how to respond to adversity, and how to interact with fellow human beings. We decide whether to pull the trigger or not.

We are also facing a choice right now about what sort of world we will live in. Who’s going to make the rules? Who’s laws will we be subject to? Are we going to face summary execution for drawing things? Will the religious edicts of the least enlightened among us apply to all?

Probably. At least, I’m not convinced anyone will try too hard to stop it. 

If I were murdered one day. . .a tale of cartoons and useful idiots.

Do you know something?  If I were to be murdered one day, I honestly think I’d be less offended by the murder itself than by someone who tried to excuse it.

            Someone standing by my beside, trying to put my murder in a wider social context as I slowly bleed to death, explaining as I fade away, that it really wasn’t about me at all. I think I’d have very little to say to that person at that moment.

            I thought about this several days after I heard of the Charlie Hebdo. massacre. What I thought on the day of the massacre itself was I no longer lived in the world I thought I did. I was living in a world where I could be killed for drawing a picture on a piece of paper. It was not a world I recognized; I didn’t like it. I wanted my old world back, the one where you were allowed to draw things.

             

            What happened in Paris was that four people decided to slaughter eleven other people for drawing some pictures. They felt that human life was less important than some pencil lines on paper, and decided that snuffing out these lives would be the best way to prevent said pencil from reaching said paper. They decided that everyone was going to abide by their superstitions, under pain of death.

            They shot eleven real people for drawing hypothetical people.

            What planet are we living on?

            As I said, it was not the world I recognized, and not the world I wanted, and I would probably have to fight to get the old one back. Not by bombing other countries with F-16s, but simply by not letting some barbarian dictate how to live life. So I was thrilled the next day when the Toronto Star, that most pc of papers, printed one of the offensive cartoons in its editorial. Clearly, they were not going to be intimidated. I thought that maybe the Canadian media and inteligencia had abandoned its policy of appeasement and was going to stand up to these buggers.

            Sadly I was mistaken. The very next day, this article appeared:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/01/10/charlie_hebdo_attacks_not_just_about_cartoons.html

            So apparently the whole thing wasn't about the dead cartoonists after all, but "the ever-shifting religious dynamics and political reality of the global Muslim community". 

            Did they mean the political reality in which people could shot for drawing pictures?

            Heather Malick condemned the cartoons as “racist”, Haroon Siddiqui felt compelled to remind us all of the limits on freespeech, John Cruickshank spoke of “exploiting [free speech] to commit a moral wrong” (by which he meant the cartoons, not the killings), and the useful idiots at Rabble.ca insisted that one remember "that France is at war with many Islamic countries".

          (I suppose a magazine office is now a legitimate military target. . .)

           Equivocations, rationalizations, and praise by faint damnation from the horde of appologists whom Salman Rushdie christened the “but brigade”. “The shootings were awful, BUT. . .” “We have the right to free speech BUT. . .” “There’s no excuse for violence, BUT. . .” BUT BUT BUT!

            But what? If they don’t condone the killings, why are they wasting so much ink telling us that the real evils lie elsewhere? Why go on as if assholery and murder were equivelant wrongs? Why is it so hard to just say it’s wrong to shoot people for religious reasons?

           

            Could it be because on some level, they don’t actually believe that? Perhaps, deep down, they think there are some things you shouldn’t say, things you shouldn’t draw, things you shouldn’t think?

            Why else would they quibble when eleven people are dead? For drawing pictures?

           

            I’m sick it. I’m sick of the prevarication, the wilful blindness, the insinuation that I am subject to someone else’s religious edicts. I’ll draw, say, write, and think what I damn well please.

            Je suis Charlie.

            

            

Halloween: In which My Ghosts Beat your Colours.

So the best day of the year has just passed again, and once again it has come to my attention (via a friend here) that some stuffed-shirt boores are trying to stamp it out again. "Of course!" I think. "Why wouldn't they?"  It comes as no surprise to me that any day which encourages creativity in children would encounter the wrath of the think-factory machinery. This little rant is an elaboration of what I wrote there:

Halloween is the best day for childhood. It's the one occasion that not just encourages but demands creativity and imagination. "Go out there," it says "and PRETEND. IMAGINE. Be something else for a few hours. Anything you want. It's YOUR time."

For a few short hours, they're allowed to play. The deep dark night is no longer forbidden, the stranger's doorstep is no longer off limits. It's a couple hours of sanctified greed, where they can acquire large piles of loot, regardless of their socio-economic circumstances, which belongs exclusively to them. Meanwhile, neighbours who might never look at each other during the year are suddenly pounding on each other's doors, demanding hospitality. They say hello, they laugh and smile, they share.

Of course someone wants to wipe it all out!

I think it was HL Menken who once defined Puritanism as "a sneaking suspicion that somebody somewhere might be happy". Indeed, I don't think there's an earthly pleasure that isn't forbidden by someone, and no celebration anywhere that doesn't have its detractors.

But "Black and Orange" day? There is something particularly banal about that. What, no costume at all? No character, no creature, no flight of fancy at all? In fact, it's even less inventive than a regular school day, as the kids choices are even further restricted than usual. "On this day of celebration, your options are limited to two sets of colours." I suppose it's meant to reflect the season colours of pumpkins, but alas, reminds me much more of prison jumpsuits.  Uniformity, similarity, tedium. How does the one day set aside to celebrate creativity become even more regulated? It's a chance to homogonize the kids, reduce them all to obedient little widgets in the industrial machine - well behaved, high achieving little mannequins for the School Board Website.

Maybe some squeamish parents faint at the sight of fake blood. And maybe others are afraid of ghosts. Maybe some dippy New Age hippy types don't like witches in pointy hats, maybe some religio-fundy types are afraid of demons, and still others can't stand anything that predates their religion (because history started with them of course). Many now are afraid of their own shadows, and certainly won't permit their kids to go out and play in them.

Most of all though, I think it's the bureaucrat which fears the misfit, and can't stand that there's a day in which that creepy kid in the corner just might thrive.

In which concept is marred by execution: the stories of Algernon Blackwood

(By the way: this one's late. It was written back in October, but I forgot to post it. Still relevant: maybe for next October. . .)

I can't do it. I know it's October, and I know he inspired HP Lovecraft, but try as I might, I cannot get into this Algernon Blackwood guy.



No I don't want to get sidetracked into providing a full biography, bibliography and psychoanalysis. This being the internet age, you can zip over to wikieverything and get everything you need to know there. See you in a few:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Blackwood



Done? Good. This is not going to be a scholarly essay, this is going to be a collection of initial impressions I want to get out of the way so I can eat my Thanksgiving dinner. It is now the 13th of October (not a Friday, alas), and the only real seasonal reading I've managed is Algernon Blackwood. And I've decided not to continue. I'm finding his writing clumsy, meandering, and a tad melodramatic.



Now melodrama is not a bad thing in itself, but you need the meat and potatoes to back it up - in a word substance. Events in the narrative must lend credence to the melodrama, it must seem a reasonable to be melodramatic under the circumstances. In Blackwood's stories, it does not. It seems a whole lot of overreaction to circumstances that really aren't that exciting. They are not terribly exciting because unlike a Lovecraft, a Bierce or a Poe, Blackwood doesn't seem capable of making them exciting.



An example: I am currently slogging through "Ancient Sorceries". A man has gotten off a train in a strange town. He's beginning to notice its strangeness and is getting alarmed. I, the reader, am not. Partly because I'm pretty sure I can guess where this story is going – Blackwood is incredibly unsubtle in his foreshadowing – and partly because I am utterly indifferent to both the town’s mystery and the man’s predicament. So he arrives in a town full of weirdos? So what? Leave. I don’t find myself terribly concerned.

 

Now here’s the paragraph that convinced me to drop the book and abandoned the story. It’s supposedly an important one:


”It was on the fifth day he made a definite discover which increased his alarm and brought him to a rather sharp climax. . . Before that he had already noticed that a change was going forward and certain subtle transformations being brought about in his character which modified several of his minor habits. . .

At the best of times he was never very positive, yet when necessity arose he was capable of reasonably vigorous action and could take strongish decision. The discover he now made that brought him up with a such a sharp turn was that this power had positively dwindled to nothing. He found it impossible to make up his mind.”

 

So our protagonist is having bouts of indecision. This is supposed to be a horrifying personal revelation? Call me unimpressed.

 

For one thing, the character up until this point has been described in such a way as to make indecision entirely consistent with his character. What comes as a surprise rather is that he could ever be capable of “reasonably vigorous action and strongish decision.” There is also the element of “who cares?” If the character had noticed a change in his sleeping or sexual habits, sudden weight gain or loss, bizarre dreams and visions, or developed an appetite for past-its shelf life tuna, we could share his alarm. He’s changing! Something weird is definitely happening! If he’d grown confused and befuddled, or started forgetting things, we could go along with it. But he simply can’t make up his mind? Come now, who can, even at the best of times? On the scale of creepy goings on, it ranks well below 3 out of 10.   

 

The result being that this supposedly important plot point falls absolutely flat. I am not compelled to read on. I have no curiosity. A failure to instil that is, I think, a writer’s cardinal sin.

 

Remember, this is not a scholarly essay. I am not analyzing the story. I am only telling you what I read so far, and why I won’t be finishing. Maybe the ending is brilliant and I’ll be missing out missing out on a masterpiece - and maybe that Nigerian oil tycoon really does want me to look after his millions. I’ll take that chance. I would not expect a brilliant conclusion to follow from a sloppy set up. And don’t give me that “you can’t judge it ‘till you’ve read it” line. The fact is, this writer has failed to capture or maintain my interest. How much time am I supposed to give him? As far as I’m concerned, I’ve kept my side of the bargain – I gave his story an honest shot, and in return he bored me. He violated the contract between writer and reader, rendering it null and void. I’m now a free agent, to take my time elsewhere. . .

 

 

Post Scriptus:

Lest I come across as too grouchy – no, don’t protest! – I should make it clear that not all of Blackwood’s stories are clunkers; “The Wendigo” and “Willows” contained in them some delightful moments – he’s particularly evocative in his descriptions of vast, hostile wilderness. Made me homesick when I was in UK. But even in those stories, there were moments where I wondered what exactly his characters were frightened about. I think I know what he was trying to achieve: nameless dread at something intangible or unknowable is a staple of good horror fiction: Lovecraft was a master at this. So is Ramsey Campbell (though, to be honest, I find his short fiction more successful than his full length works). Blackwood I'm afraid was not. It doesn't matter that Lovecraft found inspiration in him: sometimes the master is inspired by the student. . .

Oh Canada: behave and make it bland!

So. . .

In the latest campaign against the inequalities of antiquity, certain luminaries of the Canadian intelligentsia, Margaret Atwood and Belinda Stronach chief among them, have set their sites on this country's national anthem. At issue would appear to be the out dated phrase "in all thy sons command", which would appear to exclude all thy daughters, also eager for command. Perhaps the lyrics should be rewritten, gender neutral.

Fortunate indeed our daughters if this is their most pressing issue.

Now, as a white man, I realize I am in a poor position to lecture other people about when they ought to feel excluded, and I realize it is not ultimately my decision what causes the oppressed multitudes ought to take up. But try as I might, I really cannot see the urgency here. I honestly can't. I don't see how the lyrics of the anthem affect anybody's life in any meaningful way, I don't see how the lyrics of the anthem prevent women from participating in Canadian society in any capacity they choose (whatever other barriers there may be) and I'm honestly not convinced anyone else really cares.

Last weekend I had the privilege of singing the anthem at a football game with my choir. The audience stood dutifully at attention and listened politely, but the producers still didn't see fit to televise our bit. It was only the anthem after all, who would care? Best to get in a few more advertising dollars. This is the degree to which "Oh Canada" is revered in our country, to whit: not at all. In school, we used to slouch behind our chairs and mumble the words while we waited to sit back down again (subsequent folk and hip-hop versions similarly failed to inspire us). We paid very little attention to what the words actually were. At sporting events, folk will stand crookedly with their hands in their pockets, sway to and fro and maybe hum along. God knows I am no fan of jingoistic displays of nationalism, and yet. . .well, I can lament this another time. Point being: very few people appear overtly inconvenienced by the words of "O Canada".

 When significant persons go after issues such as these, issues that have no immediate effect on anybody, they strike me as looking for itches to scratch. The campuses are full of such types, folk who need to prove themselves in the crowded world of academia by finding pots to stir and sacred cows to slaughter, at a time when there are very few left. Perhaps its a positive sign of a healthy society that we have to look this hard for things to be upset about, and maybe it's evidence of a truly free society that we need to look this hard for evidence of oppression.

Maybe. Perhaps. I'm a man, what do I know?

Going after the anthem bugs me for two reasons. One is the impoverishment of language, to be expected in a politician like Stronach, but disappointing in a writer like Atwood. The other is the lack of tolerance for earlier eras.

To cleanse language of terms which are not in the strictest sense considered "neutral", limits the language we have at our disposal. We suddenly have fewer ways to express ourselves. To find meaning. It would not be an exaggeration to say language is what sets us apart from animals: it is what allows us as a species to share knowledge and experience, and - crucially - give meaning to abstraction. It's quite extraordinary when you think about just how much is being expressed by simple words like "freedom" or "love". It's not just our ability to express concepts either, but to understand them. Our ability to understand any concept is largely dependant on our ability to describe it. For this, we need as extensive a vocabulary as possible.   Limiting this is not only incredibly petty but actually quite dangerous.

To be fair, no one is suggesting that phrase "at thy sons command" should be permanently removed from the English language, but they are suggesting we shouldn't be allowed to use it on this occasion. "It's exclusive; use something else". It's regulation of language by a small party, which I would never be in favour of.

Language is not only about the communication of meaning, but also the communication of, well, beauty (How's that for an abstraction). A poet's first concern when writing a piece is never "is this phrase inclusive enough" but "how does this phrase sound? Is it good enough?" The poet's first concern should always be with the quality of the work, and never to the needs of the state. Or anyone else for that matter. Is the phrase really the best for the task? Well the alternatives, "all our hearts command" or "everyone's command" are all bland as porridge by comparison. Cherry picking language for inclusive phrases rarely leads to great poetry.

Which indirectly leads me to my second objection. "All thy sons command" is a deliberate archaism, penned at a time when deliberate archaisms were fashionable. Having suffered through a creative writing course in the past, I know that deliberately archaic language is deeply unfashionable among today's literati, and can't help thinking that's what's driving this campaign as much as anything. "Make it modern! Make it relevant!" Indeed, why should the past be allowed to intrude upon our modern sensibilities? After all, isn't this the land where tax-payer dollars went to grafting a cancerous crystal carbuncle onto the Royal Ontario Museum?

Past? What past?
Monolith monsters devour Royal Ontario Museum.

 
Be that as it may, supposing Stronach and company really do feel put out by the lyrics of the national anthem? Should an old song (the English version was commissioned more than a hundred years ago, in 1905) reflecting old values and old aesthetics continue to represent the country today? Well, I would argue that if we're to have any pretentions of being a real culture with a real history, we cannot rewrite or whitewash that history, nor pretend that this society has always been what we would like it to be. If we go about retroactively rewriting old songs and stories that don't reflect our current values, we'll soon be left without any songs or stories. I suppose we could change the lyrics of "O Canada" and not be any worse (besides having a more boring anthem, which is not nothing), but then what? What else could we go after? The Merchant of Venice? "Farewell to Nova Scotia"? "Money for Nothing"? A culture cleansed of its tics and its heritage, eternally on eggshells, permanently terrified of someone else's toes. A culture sanitized to the point of banality.

Does anyone really want that?