Singer Mason Greer, who offered a bilingual version of “O Canada” in North Carolina on Thursday night before the game between the Canadiens and the Hurricanes, said he was surprised, but also honoured by the praise he received in the last few hours.
“O Canada,” originally a patriotic poem written in French by Adolphe-Basile Routhier for the 1880 Saint-Jean-Baptiste celebrations in Quebec City, is usually sung in English only at NHL games outside of Montreal and Ottawa.
But singer Mason Greer decided to do otherwise on Thursday night in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the southern United States.
“Car ton bras sait porter l’épée, il sait porter la croix! Ton histoire est une épopée, des plus brillants exploits.”
It was enough for the 24-year-old to sing only these few words to arouse a lot of reactions.
“The last 12 hours have been crazy,” and “very intense,” Greer said in a phone conversation with The Canadian Press Friday at noon.
He said he was surprised to have seen his name appear in the “trends of the moment” on some social networks, while several Internet users congratulated him and thanked him for thinking to sing a few words in French.
“People have written me messages directly in French, but I don’t speak a word of French,” so “I write them ‘Merci beaucoup,’ because that’s all I know how to say,” says the singer, who lived in the Toronto area until he was a teenager before moving to Carolina.
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Since 2018, the full-time student has been singing the national anthem at the Hurricanes’ home when visiting Canadian teams.
So he got into the habit of offering a bilingual version when the Senators and Canadiens play the Hurricanes.
The young singer, who has more than a decade of experience singing national anthems in sports stadiums, has never experienced such a high-octane and noisy atmosphere as the one at the start of Thursday’s game in Raleigh.
“It feels like our eardrums are like exploding speakers, and I think that, given the emotions around it, the intensity, the meaning of the moment … It takes your breath away.”
That intensity came to a head when Seth Jarvis scored to make it 1-0 for the home side after 30 seconds. But then, Cole Caufield, Phillip Danault, Alexandre Texier, Ivan Demidov and Juraj Slafkovsky all helped dampen the enthusiasm of the spectators.
A poem that became an anthem
Originally, the poem written by Adolphe-Basile Routhier and set to music by Calixa Lavallée, at the request of the National Congress of French Canadians, was called “Chant national.”
Over the years, this song has become popular across Canada, in different versions in English.
The most famous English version was that of Robert Stanley Weir, written in 1908 in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.
Except for a few words, it is the words of Robert Stanley Weir that are sung today in the English version of the anthem.
In 1967, “O Canada” was officially approved as Canada’s national anthem by the Senate and the House of Commons.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
