It always makes me cringe -- sometimes laugh-- when I hear a Canadian sing the American national anthem at a sports game when a U-S team is visiting Canada.
Technically any Canadian who sings The Star Spangled Banner is a traitor.
The song tells the story of a battle between the British -- who evolved to become Canadians and a Dominion of the British Empire and still is -- and the American revolutionaries who were rebelling against the English monarchy.
The song is all about how the rebels killed and slaughtered the British through an overnight pitched battle.
"The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air.
My mother and all my relatives on her side are English and Welsh.
My father was Canadian but served in the British Army.
So basically the American anthem is how rebels once slaughtered my family.
Even in the States there have been calls over the years to ditch the ole stars and stripes and replace it with the peaceful "America The Beautiful" and its "spacious skies and amber fields of grain."
Instead of bombs killing people.
By the way, I'm kind of joking about all this, but it does make you think when you know that what is supposed to be a happy song of patriotism is really pretty gruesome.

 

Last edited by newsguy1 (June 20, 2024 11:29 am)