"All thy sins"

So Canada has finally changed its national anthem, "O Canada" to include, or rather not exclude, 50% of its citizens; namely their female humans.

The phrase "All thy sons" that has stood for more than one-hundred years despite feminist protest for at least forty, was officially changed to "All of us" last week.

So female Canadians are not explicitly included now - that would be going a step too far, and of course 'daughters' is much harder to rhyme than 'sons' (women are just so bloody difficult!) - but females are not explicitly excluded, so that is something. The humans that gave birth to every single Canadian are finally celebrated, indirectly, in its national anthem. Hooray! 

And there was me thinking Canada was a little more gender-evolved than that and would have long since made this obvious upgrade. But less surprising is that misogyny has no particular country, colour or creed, which this delay aptly confirms.

As an Australian I grew up singing: "Australian sons let us rejoice for we are young and free..." 

I never really thought anything of it, but as I knew at a young age that my brother, though older than me, had much more freedom than I did, I think subconsciously, even at the age of five when I started loudly rejoicing about the freedom my brother had, I was thinking, not forever buddy, my time will come...

And it did - sort of. The Aussies upgraded their anthem to "Australians all let us rejoice" in the 1980s, once I'd grown up and left the country. Take that, brother.