The clot of angry e-mails plugging Zoe Watson's inbox is growing by the hour.
They arrive by the hundreds from every corner of the country, all with a singular message: Bring back the anthem.
“I can't keep up with them,” said Ms. Watson, school superintendent of the New Brunswick district that includes Belleisle Elementary in Springfield, where a decision to cancel daily renditions of O Canada has touched off a patriotic uproar.
In a Saint John Telegraph-Journal article last week, Erik Millett, Belleisle's principal, hinted that he pulled the anthem in 2007 because two parents complained on religious grounds – an explanation that has stirred up a coast-to-coast fury of patriotic indignation.
That protest is having an effect. Ms. Watson said Friday she has asked Belleisle's principal to rescind his anthem policy.
“I'm asking him to reconsider,” she said.
A chorus of federal politicians sounded similar notes Friday in a hullabaloo that has now branched into loftier debates over the role of God and patriotism in the classroom.
Keith Ashfield, a junior Tory minister, called the Belleisle move “political correctness run wild” and fellow MP Tilly O'Neill-Gordon referred to it as “disrespectful and ill-informed.” A Conservative Party news release later urged Belleisle to reverse its decision.
But the rationale for their outrage is largely unfounded. A cursory survey of schools across the country shows that Belleisle is one of many where students don't sing the national anthem daily.
In British Columbia, morning renditions of O Canada are so uncommon that principals there can't fathom what the Belleisle hubbub is all about.
“I was surprised to hear that the daily singing was still going on,” said Brian Chappell, principal of Harwin Elementary School in Prince George. “We stopped doing it a long, long time ago. I think that's pretty standard throughout the district and the province.”
The reaction was similar in Alberta, where school officials said morning anthem policies vary from school to school. Terry Young, president of the Canadian Association of Principals, said singing of the morning anthem is so rare as to be “a non-issue.”
At schools in Winnipeg and Nova Scotia, however, the national anthem is piped over loudspeakers on a daily basis.
“We're very nationalistic here in Cape Breton,” said Charles Sheppard, co-ordinator of school services for the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board. “All of our 50 or so schools sing every morning.”
School officials did say that allowances are always made for students whose parents object to the “God keep our land” portion of the anthem.
“We've had several people object to the anthem on religious grounds,” said Mr. Chappell, whose school still sings the anthem in weekly assemblies. “Jehovah's Witness students, for example, those students will sit or simply choose not to sing.”
The scattershot set of anthem policies shows that the school system undervalues civics and history, according to the Dominion Institute, a non-partisan foundation devoted to promoting Canada's history.
“It's part of a wider trend,” lamented Marc Chalifoux, the institute's executive director. “Our schools are not doing a good job of preparing our young people to be citizens.”
In a poll released last year, the Dominion Institute found that just 53 per cent of Canadian could recite the first line of O Canada.
At least one national organization was defending Belleisle's principal Friday, saying that the national anthem should be altered to remove any religious connotations.
“I love our national anthem,” said Michael Payton, spokesman for the Canadian Secular Alliance. “But for those who are non-religious, the mention of God gives them the feeling that they are less Canadian, that they are not part of the country. The anthem should include all Canadians.”
