In the weeks and days before 11 November each year, millions of
Canadians sprout red poppies on their lapels. After the
Armistice of the “War to End All Wars” the Royal British Legion
and the Royal Canadian Legion adopted the red poppy in 1921 as a
symbol of collective remembrance. How many other countries
embrace this symbol so wholeheartedly and publicly? Many of us
are familiar with the words of the famous poem In Flanders
Field. In 1915 then-Major John McCrae was the exhausted Brigade
Surgeon serving with the First Brigade of the Canadian Forces
Artillery in the Flanders area of Belgium. Some of the worst
fighting and casualties of the war occurred there at Ypres. A
weary McCrae paused while patching wounded soldiers and burying
the dead to write some immortal words: In Flanders fields, the
poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our
place; and in the sky The larks still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. Every year I am deeply touched
by his words. For some time I live