7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids (Millennium Generation Series)

Picture a palacial ballroom in Quebec City on the night of St. Jean Baptiste day, June 24, 1880. Five hundred guests are on hand for a banquet -- the crowning event of an international celebration of the French in North America. The Governor-General is here, along with Quebec's Lieutenant-Governor and the Honourable Wilfrid Laurier, plus senators, judges, mayors and delegates from across Canada and New England. They sit at six long tables laden with delicacies: salmon, turkey, capon, roast beef and lobster salad. For dessert are ices, creams and pies of strawberry, peach, raspberry, rhubarb and plum. What a party! All that's needed is a song. And the organizers have just the thing: a tune freshly-penned by one of Quebec's most renouned composers: Calixa Lavallée.

Lavallée hailed from St.-Hyacinthe, Que., and his resumé shows that nothing ever changes: He had to go south to succeed. Lavallée enlisted as a musician in the Union army in the U.S. Civil War, emerging wounded and honourably discharged. He then found fame writing operas in New York, Boston, Paris and London. Returning to Quebec in 1880, Lavallée found his compatriots buzzing with plans for celebration. The habitants had heeded the Catholic Church's plea to make babies, and the French felt powerful and proud. Party planners asked Lavallée for some music. The words came from another son of Quebec, Mr. Justice Adolphe-Basile Routhier.

After the meal at the Quebec City banquet hall, the band of 100 trumpets struck up, accompanied by a choir. "Electrified by an unstoppable impulse," reported those who were there, the crowd stood and heard for the first time the brand-new song, whose words existed only in French: "O Canada." Over the next 20 years, the song became a hit in Quebec, sung in churches and on all formal occasions; 2,000 schoolchildren sang it to the Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V), when he visited Quebec in 1901. Then the tune spread east and west -- but with no English words.

People across Canada began to compose their own English lyrics, and by the 1920s, English Canadians sang 200 different versions. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, seeking an official English O Canada for the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation in 1927, asked his chief archivist to write Canadian Clubs from coast to coast, asking for "a copy of the text used by your club." The replies, as preserved at the National Library, show that Stratford sang, "O Canada! Beloved country thou; Hope's holy wreath adorning thy young brow," while Toronto sang, "Lord of the lands! Beneath thy bending skies; On field and flood, where'er our banner flies."

Amid this confusion, one version stood out, written in 1908 by yet another son of Quebec, Montreal judge Robert Stanley Weir. Rather than translate the French, Judge Weir captured the spirit: "O Canada! Our home and native land." The federal government chose to publish Weir's song for the 1927 festivities, and it is the song we sing, with minor modifications, today.

The song spread in World War II and by the 1960s won its place as the country's national song. But it was still not official. Finally, in the wake of the 1980 sovereignty referendum, the House of Commons showed a rare common purpose, and on June 27, 1980 voted unanimously to pass the National Anthem Act. Exactly 100 years after its birth, O Canada finally became the nation's official anthem.

Sumptuously illustrated with full-colour collages and photographs, this book is a must-read for every child who belts out O Canada at school in the morning, and wants to know more about where it came from.


Good Insight Into What Makes Kids Succeed as Kids   October 10, 2001
Bunk 11 (Harrisburg, PA United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids tells the stories of real kids and what makes them successful as kids. It provides good insight into what it takes for kids to be happy and feel a sense of accomplishment using actual stories from about 15 kids, both boys and girls, from Canada and the U.S. Kids can read this to see how other kids have handled situations similar to those they may be facing themselves, whether it's moving or dealing with problems at school or any of numerous other challenges children have to face and overcome. It can inspire kids to bring out the best in themselves.


Surviving and thriving in the pre-teen jungle   October 5, 2001
Peter Kuitenbrouwer (Toronto, ON Canada)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Imagine you're 11 years old. You are performing a magic show in front of 50 children. You pull out your "magic wallet" out of which you can make flowers appear. Only, they don't appear. What do you do?
In 7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids, David Armstrong, a child magician in Toronto, describes how he overcame that challenge. In all, 22 kids from across North America share stories of their success in this book, aimed at kids aged 8-12. Meet a skateboard champ, a pianist, two singers, a drummer, a gymnast, a female hockey player and many more kids.