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These e-mail screeds against O Canada being belted out in Hindi date to June 2007. In its earliest version (the first example quoted first below), no mention was made of anyone's planning to sing Canada's national anthem in Hindi at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. That part was added to the piece months later as it circulated on the Internet: Examples: The They want to sing it in Hindi rant is but a version of a May 2007 screed (the second example quoted above) decrying someone's desire to render Canada's anthem in Spanish, which itself is but a version of a July 2006 Internet-circulated polemic (the third example quoted above) decrying the singing of the U.S. anthem in Spanish. The author of the original rant is unknown. The item's claim that O Canada was written in English, and should be sung word for word the way it was written is a Canadianization of the claim made in the July 2006 piece about rendering the U.S. anthem in Spanish: It was written by Francis Scott Key and should be sung word for word the way it was written. It's also woefully in error: O Canada was penned in French (music by Calixa Lavallee, lyrics by Judge Adolph-Basile Routhier) and was written and first performed in 1880. Difficulty in deriving and then gaining general agreement upon an appropriate translation of its lyrics into English plagued lyricists for many decades at the beginning of the 20th century. According to Marlene Wehrle, head of the printed collection of the National Library's Music Division, more than 50 English-language versions of O Canada were created. (The archive has the sheet music for most of them.) The version on which the official English lyrics are based was written in 1908 by Justice Robert Stanley Weir. Canadian Heritage (an official web site of the Canadian government) says about rendering O Canada in languages other than French or English that: As to how the 2010 Winter Olympics (which will be held in Vancouver) became associated with this string of evolving e-mails decrying someone's desire to sing the U.S. anthem in Spanish or the Canadian anthem in Spanish or Hindi, it is tied to Canadian broadcaster Bruce Allen's regaling his listening audience with his views on the behavior of immigrants to Canada during the 13 September 2007 airing of his show Reality Check. Allen's remarks drew the ire of a number of listeners, prompting calls to have him removed from the air waves and/or the 2010 Olympic Winter Games Ceremonies team (of which he is part). Complaints were filed with Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, and a campaign to oust Allen from his Olympic position was launched. Both failed: The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruled that Allen did not violate the Human Rights Clause of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' code of ethics, and Allen remains a member of the 2010 Olympics Committee. In November 2007, a version of the evolving e-mail that invoked Bruce Allen and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics began landing in inboxes: While the November 2007 version positions Bruce Allen as the author of the They want to sing the National Anthem in Hindi piece by stating that his recent comments [are] outlined below, he did not pen that item. His actual remarks, the ones that landed him in hot water, were as follows: It's not uncommon for bits of various Internet-circulated polemics to be introduced into other soapbox pieces. A part of the ever-evolving anthem screed shares the wording of another anti-immigration piece having to do with Pell Grants in the U.S.: If the somewhat convoluted tale of how one Internet rant about the U.S. anthem being sung in Spanish became a rant about O Canada being sung in Hindi at the 2010 Winter Olympics has left you a bit out of breath and somewhat confused, here's a summary of the action: Yet the story doesn't end there — in March 2009, a version appeared that decried they wanting to sing the Australian national anthem in Arabic. (As is the custom, no further description of who this mysterious they might be was given.)
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