CANADA’S NATIONAL SONG

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 970, 13 May 1930, Page 14

CANADA’S NATIONAL SONG

CENTENARY OF SCOTTISH COMPOSER “MAPLE LEAF FOR EVER” Celebrations were recently held in Canada of the centenary of the birth of Alexander Muir, 8.A., the author and composer of “The Maple Leaf for Ever” and other patriotic songs popular in the Dominion. Muir was a Scotsman, born at Lesmahagow, in Lanarkshire, on April 5, 1830, but lived almost the whole of bis life in Canada. He was a school teacher by profession and became the principal of a large school in the city of Toronto. He died there in January, 1906, and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. According to a paper written by Miss Janet Carnochan for the Ontario Historical Society in 1906, the maple leaf was first formally adopted as the national emblem of Canada during the visit to Canada in 1860 of the late King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales. Shortly afterward Muir composed his well-known song, which was first heard in public at Beaverton, Ontario, in 1871, and became the popular national song of the Dominion. It is now being challenged by the more modern and more poetical “O Canada,” words by the Hon. A. B. Routhier, a French-Canadian, and music by Judge Richardson.