Statement by Ontario PC Leader on John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields

On this day 101 years ago, Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae of Guelph, Ontario, penned the fifteen lines that would become Canada’s, and perhaps the world’s, best known war poem, In Flanders Fields.  

McCrae was already a veteran of the Boer War with a distinguished medical career when he joined the 1st Brigade CFA (Canadian Field Artillery).  He had taught at the Ontario Agricultural College in his hometown, as well as at universities and hospitals in Canada.

When Canada joined its allies in the war effort, McCrae brought his military and medical experience to the Western Front, where from a makeshift bunker clinic within earshot of the front line he treated the wounded of the Second Battle of Ypres in April and May of 1915. 

Despite the debilitating effects of the chlorine gas used against them for the first time, Canadians fought and held the line at Ypres for what McCrae called the “Seventeen days of Hades”,  never breaking faith with those who died.   Indeed, they did not go gently into the night. When the barrage lifted, many in the brigade had perished. From these hellish trenches was born Canada’s reputation as a fighting nation, with soldiers of courage and tenacity who could be counted on in the toughest battles. 

After presiding over the death and burial of a friend, McCrae was moved to write In Flanders Fields. The poem’s redemptive image of red poppies springing from the corpse-rich Flanders soil became popular in recruitment and war-bond campaigns in Canada and in the other Allied Powers. After the war, it inspired the tradition of remembering the fallen by wearing poppies on November 11th. 

As the torch is passed to a new generation of Canadian soldiers, sailors, and aviators to take up the quarrel against a new foe, we send our heartfelt thanks to them and remember those who went before them.

They shall not grow old in Flanders Fields.