Whether mumbling half-remembered lyrics or giving it the full-throated rendition, a clear majority of Canadians responding to a cross-country survey say they feel a swelling of pride whenever they sing the national anthem — something many will have a chance to do this Canada Day weekend.
But citizens are considerably less likely to display their love of country on shirts and hats, according to the web-panel poll of 1,500 people commissioned by the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies and carried out June 10-12 by the firm Leger Marketing.
About 75 per cent of the population gets a surge of patriotic feeling when warbling O Canada. And a “slight majority” of 53 per cent of Quebec residents expressed pride in singing the 133-year-old national song, which was composed in 1880 by Quebec musician Calixa Lavallee but only officially named Canada’s anthem in 1980.
Albertans were most likely — at 86 per cent — to express an upwelling of emotion when singing the song. And the anthem’s pride-inducing power appears to grow as Canadians get older, with 63 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 24 saying they felt proud when singing O Canada compared with 87 per cent of those 65 years old or more.
“Contrary to what some people might assume, the fact is people feel very patriotic when they sing the national anthem,” said ACS executive Jack Jedwab, calling it a “positive surprise” that the numbers were so high.
Outside of Quebec, eight out of 10 Canadians said they feel a rush of pride when belting out the anthem, with respondents from Manitoba/Saskatchewan (84 per cent), B.C. (83), Ontario (80) and Atlantic Canada (79 per cent) all registering strong results.
“Even 50 per cent of francophones felt patriotic when singing the anthem,” Jedwab added, acknowledging the traditional divide between English- and French-Canadian populations when it comes to conspicuous displays of Canadian patriotism.
However, Jedwab said another question in the poll revealed that Canadians are not terribly keen on wearing a T-shirt or hat emblazoned with Canada’s flag or other maple leaf symbols.
“That was a bit low, especially among francophones,” he said. “We don’t wear our pride on our sleeves, so to speak.”
Only 36 per cent of Canadians overall responded that they had worn a T-shirt or hat with a maple leaf within the past year. In Quebec, just 13 per cent of those surveyed said they’d sported a maple leaf, while Ontarians (45 per cent) were most likely to say they’d done so.
Forty-four per cent of Albertans and just over 40 per cent of respondents from each of Manitoba/Saskatchewan, B.C. and Atlantic Canada had recently displayed Canada’s main emblem on their clothing.
About 42 per cent of all English-speaking Canadians and allophones said they had worn a maple leaf during the past 12 months compared with only 12 per cent of French-Canadian respondents.
The survey results have a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
