The last time we changed the lyrics to Canada’s national anthem was in 1980 — a time when idealism held sway and cynicism was being held at bay.

Those were indeed heady times:

p U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the Olympics in Moscow.

p Six U.S. hostages held in Iran escaped with the help of Canadians.

p Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the Liberals won the federal elections.

p Quebec voters rejected separatism in a referendum.

p The Polish government recognized the Solidarity movement.

p And, on July 1, O Canada was finally recognized as our official national anthem.

Of course, we had been singing O Canada long before then, but in the end the lyrics were considered too repetitive with all those “O Canada”s and “we stand on guard for thee”s.

So the opportunity was taken to replace two of those sections with “God keep our land” and “From far and wide.” At the time, a reference to God was generally considered a good idea, although nowadays the atheists would be bound to kick up a fuss. The far-and-wide reference, to be honest, was little more than inoffensive filler.

But 30 years on, we live in a time where many people — even some Conservatives — agree that the line “True patriot love in all thy sons command” has become antiquated.

It implies that love for Canada is felt only by the nation’s sons — the male of the Canadian species.

Women have been participating fully in all parts of Canadian society for many years now, even risking their lives in military duty. Surely, their love for their country cannot be disputed.

One solution might be to go back to the original lyric of 1908: “True patriot love thou dost in us command.” Ye Olde English would likely trip the tongue, so we could update that to something like “True patriot love in all of us command.”

Unfortunately, the Tories did an about-face on the idea last Friday — apparently frightened by some loud-mouths on radio talks shows.

The big objection, it seems, is that this is kowtowing to political correctness. To those people, we have two answers.

First, recognizing the contributions of half the population is not “political correctness” — it is right.

Second, if we could change the lyrics at time when separatists were threatening to break up the country in a referendum, we can darn well do it now.