O Canada!

O Canada began as a song composed for the Saint-Jean-Baptiste celebrations in Quebec in 1880, with music by Calixa Lavallée, a Quebec-born composer, and French words by Adolphe-Basile Routhier, a judge and poet. Several English versions followed, and the one most commonly sung today comes from words written in 1908 by Robert Stanley Weir (1856-1926), a Montreal lawyer and judge. The song was officially adopted as Canada's national anthem in 1980. The versions differ not only in language but in manner, from plain recitation to singing, and that variety is much of the appeal of the project.

The English and French texts are not translations of one another. Each has its own imagery, and each has been revised over time. This difference makes a recording that offers both languages especially interesting, since the listener can compare how the same melody carries distinct messages. This recording is a multi-version collection. In celebration of Canada Day in 2006, LibriVox volunteers recorded ten different versions of O Canada, including some read in French and some sung in French, so that whatever your preference, English or French, spoken or sung, you will find a version that suits you. It was the weekly poetry project for the week of 25 June 2006.

There are ten short chapters, one for each version, and the set takes about twelve minutes. Seven readers took part, some of them recording several versions. Hearing a spoken version next to a sung one is a good way to notice how the music shapes the words.

It is a pleasant way to hear a national song in a variety of voices, and a small lesson in the history of the anthem itself.