The Maple Leaf Forever

I thought I’d test my patriotism with a little writing exercise. I’ve always loved the old tune “The Maple Leaf Forever,” and thought it was a darned shame you never heard it any more, because some of the words are no longer PC.

In the meantime, Keith Spicer a few years ago, as chair of a committee on national unity, lamented that there was not enough poetry in our sense of nationhood.

So why not write new words?

I was concerned not to knuckle under to the fashion for multiculturalism, and portray Canada as a hotel: I didn’t want one verse for Newfoundland, one for Sikhs, and so forth. That leaves Canada as nothing in itself: I think it is fatal to nationhood. Every verse had to be for every Canadian.

Here’s what I have come up with:


The Maple Leaf Forever
(new words to the old tune)

No sap may rise,
The leaves may fall,
The winds may whip like leather;
Yet still on winter nights recall
The maple leaf forever.

The shining sea
Dims off BC:
We watch the darkness gather.
Yet soon the dawn’s off old St. John’s:
The maple leaf forever.

Brave Fox might fall
On roads unrun--
We’ll win this race together.
Ten million feet all rise as one--
The maple leaf forever.

From Vimy Ridge
To Stanley strand,
Red blooms anoint strange heather.
Beneath stone crosses lies each man
With maple leaves forever.

All blazes gone,
We portage on,
From known to unknown river.
What can’t we do if North is true?
The maple leaf forever.