O Canada....

Today I had a friend over to watch Canada prevail over Russia in men’s hockey. Neither of us is a hockey fan, but we’re following Olympic hockey because we’re following the Olympics in general. And because we don’t see any sense in Scrooge-tastically walling ourselves off from the national hockey drama, which is, after all, much bigger than the game itself.

And it is precisely that drama that brings us to today’s topic: the use and misuse of O Canada in public spaces during the Vancouver Olympics.

Like me, my friend is uncomfortable with the aggressive tone of certain O Canadas we’ve heard in the Downtown Vancouver Olympic Debauchery Zone (DVODZ). At one point he was disturbed to see a group of rowdy red-and-whites bully a European couple into singing O Canada with them. And not in a nice way.

Note to my fellow Canadians: it’s inappropriate and just plain rude to browbeat foreigners into singing O Canada. I’ve certainly never been obliged to sing another country’s anthem. We sing ours, they sing theirs, and we respect each other. Full stop.

I haven’t personally seen foreigners being bullied into singing O Canada, but I have seen young men maliciously belt out O Canada to taunt groups of foreigners, usually Americans, they encounter in the street. And there have certainly been cases where I felt I was being coerced into singing along with the umpteenth O Canada of the day.

Here’s the deal, guys. When I like the vibe of a particular O Canada, I sing along. When I don’t, I don’t. It’s not a question of patriotism, it’s a question of personal style.

Every time I get a dirty or questioning look for not singing along, I am unpleasantly reminded of the Parliamentary flag flap of 1998, when the Reform Party put forward a motion to allow members of Parliament to place small Canadian flags on their desks in the House of Commons. This motion was overwhelmingly defeated, and for good reason—the flag is already displayed in the House, and in a divisive political climate such token displays of “patriotism” soon become compulsory, leading to a slippery slope of patriotic one-upmanship.

As I recall, this motion was a childish Reform response to a Bloc Quebecois MP’s childish criticism of what she deemed “excessive” display of the Canadian flag at the Nagano Olympics—a criticism that was childishly shouted down in the House by... you guessed it, a spontaneous singing of O Canada. Business ground to a halt for the duration of this out-of-order anthem, and because TV cameras were watching, many MPs felt obliged to sing along for fear of appearing unpatriotic.

That’s when I learned that even the nicest flag and anthem fit oh so comfortably in the palm of a bully.

So behave yourselves out there, boys. “True patriot love” is lovely. Bullying isn’t.