There was plenty of off-ice tension heading into Thursday night’s 4 Nations Face-Off final between the United States and Canada. And a lyrical change on the in-arena pregame performance of “O Canada,” from Grammy-nominated and three-time Juno Award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk, referenced the political tensions between the countries, and garnered a lot of social media discussion.
This game came with the U.S. and Canada in a trade dispute around U.S. tariffs decreed by new U.S. president Donald Trump, with those tariffs only momentarily on pause and with U.S. vice president J.D. Vance joking that if Canada doesn’t win, “the tariffs are even higher.” That also came with Trump calling the U.S. team pregame, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying “we look forward to the United States beating our soon-to-be 51st state,” and with Trump bringing that up on Truth Social in a post that got reposted by ESPN analyst P.K. Subban on X (and led to Akim Aliu going at Subban).
And there had been plenty of previous conversations about anthem-booing during this tournament, so that made for quite the backdrop to Kreviazuk’s anthem:
But what’s notable there, as many pointed out, is that Kreviazuk changed the lyrics. In particular, she modified the second line from “True patriot love, in all of us command” to “that only us command.” And her representatives confirmed to the CBC that “the switch was intentional in response to the annexation rhetoric coming from the U.S.,” as per a CBC News story Thursday night.
Some went at Kreviazuk on social media for that change, but many took it as a vow of continued Canadian sovereignty and praised her for it. Here are a few comments from each side:
There’s a long history of lyrical changes to “O Canada,” further complicated by it having official versions in two languages. The original 1880 version only had French lyrics from Adolphe-Basile Routhier. Various English translations and other versions popped up over the next decades, but Robert Weir’s 1908 English version (which was not a literal translation) was officially published for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 1929, eventually became the de facto English version of a Canadian national anthem by 1939, and became the official one in the National Anthem Act of 1980 (with some lyrical changes by Canadian Parliament at that point).
Canadian Parliament then changed the lyrics of the part in question here again in 2018 from “in all thy sons command” to “in all of us command.” But there definitely hasn’t been an official change to “that only us command.” So this was certainly a notable alteration.
Strangely, this is at least the second time there’s been a seemingly-political change to the Canadian national anthem at a major sporting event. (That’s not counting genuine missteps, such as Dennis KC Parks’ “O Christmas Tree” version.) At the 2016 MLB All-Star Game, a “lone wolf” member of Canadian group The Tenors made a much larger change, going from “With glowing hearts we see thee rise, the True North strong and free!” to “We’re all brothers and sisters, all lives matter to the great” and creating an incredible amount of discussion.