O Canada

This bas-relief is located in Central Station in Montreal. It depicts a vibrant Canada with advances in transportation and industry. Here you can see the opening lyrics of O Canada, now our national anthem, but that was not the case when this piece of art was executed. According to Wikipedia, the design is by Charles Comfort and the work was done by Sebastiano Aiello.



The lyrics of our anthem are changing for a second time since I first learned them as a child. The French version is the original. The English version is quite different from the French and was written by Robert Stanley Weir. They were changed in 1980 to add God with the line God keep our land glorious and free replacing O Canada glorious and free. This week a second modification was made. You can see above "True patriot love in all thy sons command" This has become gender neutral and is now "True patriot love in all of us command."

I always enjoy seeing this bas-relief and checking out different sections each time I am in the station.

Day 338: Oh Canada

Day 338: Oh Canada, originally uploaded by susanvg.

Once more I was going through a train station - this time Central Station in Montreal. On the north and south walls, up high, there is a frieze with words from our national anthem (the south end in English, the north in French). It depicts the many activities and jobs Canadians participated in at that time (the late 1930s to early 1940s) - everything from families reading to loggers to cowboys.... People at leisure and people at work.

I was struck in this photograph by the difference in values between that time and ours. People are actively doing not passively sitting watching others do as happens now with television. The mural, juxtaposed with the Macdonald's sign - to me the epitome of the shallow values of today - where it is not quality that counts, but speed and gimmick, where everything is predictable with no room for creativity - a cut and paste society.

Time to stop and admire and hope that we will once again value the ordinary people and stop our cult of celebrity and consumerism.

I tried to find out who created this mural and believe it is Charles Fraser Comfort.