Margaret Atwood, for example, once wrote that Johnson has been lumped with Robert Service (The Cremation of Sam McGee) as poets who were “not serious.” Atwood, however, found on a closer look that Johnson “turns out to have been a poet of considerably more sophistication despite her habit of dressing up in costumes and chanting in public.” E. Johnson’s association has been problematic all the same.

This is a frequently repeated error, though, which has been used both to defend LOTSB as authentically Indigenous, and also to criticize it, as the school board put it, for “perpetuating a romanticized version” of Indigenous history. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. It mentions the song’s connection to Scouting and summer camp and their “stereotyping” of native culture, such as the song’s line about building a wigwam on a rocky ledge. The song “romanticizes” First Nations people “while at the same time justifying colonization,” it claims. “It has been brought to our attention that this song is inappropriate and is racist.” “We would like to apologize for having students perform ‘Land of the Silver Birch’ by Pauline Johnson, in the HPAS concert on May 4,” the email reads. No matter how it goes, it is easy to imagine a chilling effect on other music teachers. The upshot is that now the apology email might have to be judged as a possible libel, for which truth is a defence. That failed, though, when a judge decided the spring concert was “an extra-curricular, unpaid and volunteer activity.” Article content Land of the Silver Birch is a folk song many generations of Canadian children have associated with camping and canoeing. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.

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