Singer who added 'all lives matter' to Canadian anthem finds himself on the sidelines

By Christopher Guly

Aug. 22, 2016 3 AM PT

Reporting from Ottawa — The first pitch hadn’t even been thrown at this summer’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game and Remigio Pereira was already on the bench.

Pereira’s decision to alter the lyrics to the Canadian national anthem — “O Canada” — during a pregame performance by the Tenors had gone over like a wild pitch with the San Diego crowd and the millions watching the summer classic on television.

Within minutes, Pereira was huddled with the other three members of the pop-operatic quartet in a boardroom at Petco Park, wrestling with how to address Major League Baseball’s demand that the group quickly and vehemently apologize for dropping a line from the anthem and singing “All lives matter” instead.

For Pereira, it spiraled downward from there.

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His Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts exploded with angry and sometimes threatening comments — both for changing up a country’s national anthem and for being insensitive to the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Go back to America … your own country,” an Ontario resident wrote on Facebook, suggesting he’d probably be “assassinated by morning.” A person from Toronto said he hoped to “run into” Pereira so he could show him “how much my country’s national anthem means to me.” Someone on Twitter simply suggested a “public tar & feathering.”

Pereira took the social media threats after the group’s San Diego performance seriously enough that he holed up at his home in Toronto for nearly a month after the anthem incident. When he finally did emerge this month do his grocery shopping, Pereira wore a partial disguise.

Pemigio Pereira holds up sign after the Tenors' performance at the All-Star Game in July.

The other members of the Tenors, meanwhile, said they were blindsided by Pereira’s decision to belt out the alternative lyrics while giving the peace sign and holding up a cardboard reading sign proclaiming “All lives matter.”

A statement on the group’s Facebook page and Twitter and Instagram accounts quickly went up saying the other three singers were “shocked and embarrassed” by Pereira’s “extremely selfish” and “shameful act.” It said that Pereira had acted as a “lone wolf” to serve his own political views.

They also said Pereira was being booted from the group “until further notice.” He did not perform with the Tenors when they performed at the Greek Theatre in L.A. this summer.

All Pereira could do was apologize, which he did over and over.

He posted a photograph of himself on Instagram holding a sign saying “I’m sorry.” He uploaded an audio clip called “Black Lives Do Matter” on SoundCloud and tried to explain that “love” was his motivation for dropping the French lyrics “For your arm knows how to bear the sword. It knows how to bear the cross” and instead — in English -- singing, “We’re all brothers and sisters. All lives matter to the great.”

“It might be the most irrational thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it was for a rational cause,” Pereira said in an interview with The Times, his first since the All-Star Game.

He said the shootings earlier this summer — of unarmed black men and police officers on routine patrol — had inspired him to “take a stand against violence against all life –- all of the ruthless killings on the street, and all of the horrendous killing of animals.”

Pereira, one of eight children born to Portuguese immigrants who moved the family from Boston to the Ottawa area when he was 8 months old, said he altered the French line in the Canadian anthem because the “sword has never instigated anything other than more bloodshed.”

He suggested that national anthems should promote love, not fear and violence. If given the chance at the All-Star Game, Pereira said he might have dumped the “bombs bursting in air” line from the U.S. national anthem.

Still, he said he was tentative about amending the Canadian lyrics when the Tenors walked onto the field.

“I was shaking in my boots and my heart was trembling. But something took over me and I had to stand up for life,” said Pereira. “The guys had no idea I would do this, and I didn’t tell them because I thought, if it all falls down, it falls down on me.”

Pereira said he knew his decision would ruffle feathers but never expected it would divide people or separate him from the Tenors.

The group, he added, has a long way to go if “life means less than the lyrics of a song.”

“Am I concerned about my life? Yes. But I won’t let hate win,” he said in a telephone interview.

He said he has not talked with the other Tenors -- Clifton Murray, Fraser Walters and Victor Micallef — or the group’s manager since the July 12 All-Star Game.

So while the Tenors tour as a trio, Pereira is scheduled to perform a few Canadian shows this fall with Toronto-based, Mediterranean-style guitarist Pavlo.

And he said he’ll steer clear of the Canadian anthem, which the House of Commons voted to change in June.

If passed by the Canadian Senate, the English lyrics of “O Canada” will become gender-neutral and change the line, “True patriot love in all thy sons command,” to “True patriot love in all of us command.”

“Anything that includes everyone is fine by me,” Pereira said.

Guly is a special correspondent.

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