O Canada

I was lying in bed the other night going over the French lyrics to ''O Canada'', our national anthem, and I realized that the French lyrics were actually really different than the English lyrics. Today I did a little bit of research on the internet and learned some new things about our national anthem (I actually knew very little about the anthem before other than the English words... and some of the French words, but more like the sounds that the French words make without actually understanding what the words were).

''O Canada'' has only been our official anthem since 1980. Before that the anthem was still officially ''God Save the Queen''. The lyrics of ''O Canada'' are from a French poem written in the 1880s by some guy from Québec (Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier). If the original French words were translated directly into English, they would be:

O Canada! Land of our forefathers
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As in thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic of the most brilliant exploits.

Ch.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights.

*and Canada is being tutoyer'd by the Poet. Which I just noticed...


I got that information from this website:
http://cougar.pch.gc.ca/pgm/ceem-cced/symbl/anthem-eng.cfm#a8
There is also a French version that I was reading:
http://pch.gc.ca/pgm/ceem-cced/symbl/anthem-fra.cfm#a8


But be warned, even though the websites look the same, the content is slightly different. For example, the French website has a literal translation of the English lyrics into French, and the English website has the literal translation of the French into English. 


What a country.