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WARMINGTON: All you need are some Barenaked Ladies to heal Canada-U.S. relations

While the review of BNL's version of O Canada is mixed, no one denies the effort was a step in the right direction

Published Sep 18, 2026  •  Last updated 19 hours ago  •  4 minute read

Barenaked Ladies sing the Canadian national anthem prior to the game between the Buffalo Bills and the Detroit Lions at Highmark Stadium on September 17, 2026 in Orchard Park, New York. Photo by Timothy T Ludwig /Getty Images

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Who would have thought it would be four Barenaked Ladies that would bring the United States of America and Canada closer again!

These famous Canadian Ladies — Ed Robertson, Jim Creeggan, Kevin Hearn and Tyler Stewart — did something Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Donald J. Trump have not been able to do: They got the two countries singing from the same song sheet again.

No fighting. No harsh words about the 51st state, American hegemony or rupture. Just friendship. And, best of all, no booing. In fact, the sold-out crowd at the Buffalo Bills 2026 home opener cheered both the Barenaked Ladies and Auliʻi Cravalho’s version of the Star-Spangled Banner.

Credit also has to go to the Buffalo Bills organization, which broke regular NFL protocol to usually just have the Star-Spangled Banner performed before its games and included O Canada for the first regular season game at the beautiful, new, $2.1-billion U.S. Highmark Stadium.

While this was Canadian-American free trade occurring again, the running joke was if they had a million dollars, how much of it would President Trump tariff it? There was lots of lighthearted humour going on: Does ICE arrest and detain associate members of the European Union? Did BNL travel from Toronto across Lake America by boat?

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But mostly that was a light-hearted love-in between football fans from both countries.

“Bills Mafia are the best,” said Jim Warren, chair of the Ontario Lottery Corporation, who is a season ticket holder and attended the game. “They were very welcoming.”

As a nod to the fact that thousands of Canadians attend the games and that the Bills are effectively Toronto’s team, the Bills made the invite at a time when the leaders at the top of both countries are not getting along so well. But the people on the ground at this incredible game, in which Josh Allen and the Bills beat the Detroit Lions handily, were getting along amazingly.

While reviews of the BNL’s O Canada were mixed, a lot of that may have actually been a result of the mix. Their a cappella version sounded different depending on where you were watching it. From a feed from a fan in the upper deck, it sounded more even, but the one that came through the board of the network seemed to present four voices that did not seem to be melding, which, through all the noise of 60,000 people singing, is not uncommon.

I have a call into Robertson and the BNL management in Los Angeles to see if they could even hear each other since it was thunderous in there. Certainly, when you review BNL’s previous national anthem performances at NHL games, you can hear the harmonies in unison with a better mix.

“There’s nothing harder for a performer than singing the national anthem,” said Jenny James, independent artist and lead singer of the Toronto band Philcos, which is playing the Pape Village Block Party Saturday night.

“I have had the extreme honour to sing O Canada at events, and I can tell you, no matter how much experience you have, your knees buckle and your heart flutters,” said James. “You can practice it in the hallway or on the tour bus, but once you get out there you are on your own and hope for the best.”

James said she was “so proud” of BNL “because they were not just singing the anthem at the Bills opening game but were thrust in the middle of a political trade war situation and were trying to show how much Canadians love Americans and how much they love us.”

James said BNL achieved that.

“I don’t know how much echo or reverb they had to endure and what the crowd noise did to being able to hear each other, but I suspect all of that was an issue,” she said. “I give them a lot of credit. That takes guts. They made us all proud to be Canadian.”

It also sounded fine to Warren in the stands, who said he had a “tear in his eye and his Canadian pride beating” in his chest: “We could hardly hear BNL,” he teased. “We are all singing ourselves.”

While they left out the “God Keep Our Land” part of O Canada when they switched over to sing in French, the bottom line is those Ladies went into potentially hostile territory with their Canadian pride and came out with a stadium singing with them.

And that’s something both Trump and Carney will take note of.

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