Hi, this is Fred Wallace with ” Off the Wire “.
I know I’ve told this story before in this segment, but I was reminded of it last weekend when the Raptors played the Nets at Brooklyn in the NBA.
A Broadway performer came out prior to the game and belted out ” O Canada “, but mangled the lyrics.
Amber Iman, the performer in question, sang “O Canada,… we sing our hearts for thee ” as opposed to, “O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.”
Naturally there was both disgust and merriment at the botched anthem.
Immediately, I flashed back to an Attack game at Saginaw years ago when, again, a performer in a musical at the Saginaw theatre was given the duties of singing the National Anthems.
In the case of the Saginaw singer, the kid got the words to ” O Canada ” perfect, in fact he was holding cue cards…………..the problem was he didn’t know the tune.
So thinking quickly, he sang the words to ” O Canada ” that were on his cue cards but he sang them to the tune of the ” Star Spangled Banner. “
The crazy thing is, he nearly made it work.
Try it.
I laughed that night. Still do.
And every time someone mangles ” O Canada “, I immediately flashback to the Star Spangled Canada version at Saginaw.
I’m Fred Wallace