O Canada! Where pines and maples grow,
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow,
How dear to us they broad domain,
From east to western sea—
Thou land of hope for all who toil,
Thou true North, strong and free! (3)

Does the cadence of that poem sound familiar? It’s the second verse of “O Canada” by R. Stanley Weir that kicks off this grade seven and eight reader. The third verse is slightly more popular because it’s a prayer to the “Ruler supreme,” sometimes still sung in churches on Canada Day Sunday. The first verse and chorus, of course, is Canada’s national anthem.

Reading this almost century old selection of prose and poetry for public schools, I was struck by a few things. First, it’s far more complicated than we would expect middle-school children to read. Take, for example, W. D. Lighthall’s “The Caughnawaga Beadwork-Seller”:

O, my dear! O Knife-and-Arrows!
Thou art bronzed, thy limbs are lithe;
How I laugh when through the crosse-game
Slipst thou like red elder-withe! (46)

This book is a shocking reminder of how literacy and attention spans have declined (even though other skills, admittedly, have risen).

Lighthall’s poem, the first in a section entitled, “Canadian Life” raises another point—the perspective on Indigenous peoples. The poem was written by a British subject writing from the perspective of an Indigenous person:

They are white men; we are Indians;
What a gulf their stares proclaim!
They are mounting; we are dying;
All our heritage they claim. (45)

The words are painful to read.

Finally, the reader does not shy away from talk about God, although it’s not Christian, per se. The closest we get to Jesus is a Norah M. Holland’s “The First Christmas” in the section entitled, “Truth and Beauty”:

And through the years between us and that morn
Still sounds that angel singing, clear and true;
And still, each Christmas Day, the Child is born
King of our hearts anew. (77)

The volume wraps up with two sections of prose—one with excerpts from classic literature and another from famous orators including William Lyon McKenzie, Sir John A. Macdonald, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

It’s strange reading a book about Canadian culture one hundred years removed. In many ways I’m deeply thankful for how society has progressed, especially in beginning to acknowledge the unspeakable pain and damage caused to Indigenous peoples. On the other hand, it’s painful to see how nature, whose beautiful was extolled again and again in verse, has been pushed to the borders of our urban lives.

Stephen, A. M., ed. The Voice of Canada: Canadian Prose and Poetry for Schools. J. M. Dent and Sons, 1926.