O Canada was initially written to honour the Quebec National Holiday, St. John Baptiste Day. In 1880, the Honorable Theodore Robitaille, Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, commissioned Adolphe-Basile Routhier to write lyrics and Calixa Lavallée to compose the music for a song to commemorate the holiday.
The song was performed for the first time on June 24, 1880 under the original name "Chant National". O Canada quickly spread through French Canada, but it would take another twenty years before the song would gain popularity in English Canada.
The earliest published English version of O Canada was written by Dr. Thomas Bedford Richardson in 1906. We found the typed lyrics of Richardson's version within Archbishop McNeil's fonds:
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| Dr. Thomas Bedford Richardson's English version of O Canada. Though Dr, Richardson's version of O Canada was beautiful in its own right, it was not a true translation of the original French text MN AS05.01 Archbishop McNeil Fonds |
There have been several English versions of O Canada since Dr. Richardson's was first published. The English version we sing today is based largely on the lyrics written by Robert Stanley Weir in 1908, however even these lyrics have been revised several times since then.
We were also interested to find a version of O Canada from 1917 that was approved by Sir Routhier as being an "exact English rendering of the original text."
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| An English translation of the original French Song, authorized by Sir Routhier. 15 March 1917 MN AH06.22 Archbishop McNeil Fonds |
There are now three official versions of O Canada: French, English and Bilingual. You can find out more about the history, lyrics, and proper etiquette surrounding anthem use here.
Happy Canada Day!
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