Poppies

     Perhaps it was the Don Cherry news, perhaps Remembrance day, or just the fact of the name John McCrae but I was thinking today about how was it that poppies became associated with remembering soldiers?

  Apparently this association goes back as far as the Napoleonic wars which noted that following battle, poppies became abundant on battlefields where soldiers had fallen.

  However the modern connection was made by John McCrae in his poem "In Flanders Fields".

John McCrae

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.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields. 

    Looking for a Montreal Bicycle Club connection I noticed that both John McCrae and Alexander McCormick were Canadian Boer War veterans and both went to McGill medical school at in the years 1901 & 1902.  It seems likely then that they knew each other.

    The inspiration for the poem was the death of McCrae's friend Alexis Helmer born in Hull Quebec.

Alexis Helmer

   The poem was written 3 May 1915 and published in Punch, December the same year and quickly became very popular.

   In the 9th November 1918 Monia Micheal wrote the poem "We Shall Keep the Faith"

Monia Micheal

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet - to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

  

    While poppies remain more popular in the United Kingdom and other commonwealth countries, it was an American, Moina Michael, who can be credited with the first charitable poppy sale.

  It seems though that the principal person who promoted the idea of using the poppy as a symbol of fallen soldiers was  Madame E. Guérin.  She was a french woman who after the first world war did a tour of the USA, Canada, Newfoundland (not then part of Canada), and the UK to promote charities associated with the war.

Madame Guérin

   Not content with allies in the Northern Hemisphere she organized to send a Colonel Samuel Alexander Moffat to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand on her behalf.

Madame Guérin’s Colonel Samuel Alexander Moffat.

P.S. On Nov 11, 2020 I was sent a link to a video "The Life of John McCrae"