Canadian Senate votes for gender-neutral national anthem

Canada just got a tiny bit more inclusive:

The Senate passed a bill that renders the national anthem gender neutral Wednesday despite the entrenched opposition of some Conservative senators.

The House of Commons overwhelmingly passed a private member's bill in 2016 that would alter the national anthem by replacing "in all thy sons command" with "in all of us command" as part of a push to strike gendered language from O Canada.

The bill was first introduced by Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger, who died in 2016.

On the one hand, I can understand the argument that historical artifacts shouldn’t be tampered with to please modern sensibilities – remember the outrage when publishers try to whitewash racial epithets out of Huckleberry Finn, for instance. But “O Canada” is the current national anthem, which means it symbolizes the country’s modern identity, and so it’s only fair that it should represent everyone in it. I don’t think it’s an unfair imposition to tweak two words of the lyrics in order to include the other half of the population.

(Also, hey, look who stood against even this small act of inclusiveness. As I’ve said before, it’s one thing Canada and the US have in common.)