Elmdale Public School

Elmdale Public School is a public elementary school in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, offering both regular English education and French immersion.

Elmdale was built in 1928 to serve what were then Ottawa's western suburbs, though it is now in the city core. The school currently has approximately 400 students from junior kindergarten to grade six, and feeds its students to Fisher Park Public School for grades seven and eight.

2007 Christmas controversy

For the grade two and three holiday concert in 2007, the school's primary choir leaders decided to change the line "soon it will be Christmas day" to "soon it will be a festive day" in the song Silver Bells (from the soundtrack of the 1951 Hollywood film The Lemon Drop Kid) to provide a non-religious song in addition to the Christmas and Hanukkah songs the choir was also performing. [http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=0ed31bbd-b93f-488b-8a07-26e0fde358a7]

One of the school parents complained to the school board and media, and the incident soon escalated into a national news story, with talk radio hosts urging listeners to call the school, resulting in numerous hostile and abusive phone calls and e-mail messages to office staff and a bomb threat against the school. [http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/city/story.html?id=9fd5e884-7553-4040-b518-d8c16b851ee3&k=8388] In the end, the concert went ahead with the planned Christmas and Hanukkah songs, but with Frosty the Snowman replacing Silver Bells.