Few who wear a red poppy today will give poet John McCrae a thought, but here is what happened after Flanders Fields to the man who gave the Fallen of the First World War its enduring symbol.
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae is rightly a hero in his home country of Canada.
Where his face and his words have become immortalised in coins, notes and stamps.
And in his home town of Guelph, Ontario and his birth home of McCrae House.
Where this Scots-Canadian’s story is told and visitors can see artefacts of his life and pay homage at his memorial.
At the memorial cenotaph and gardens with its open bronze book sculpture with his immortal words.
On a pedestal
A statue of McCrae by Ruth Abernathy stands on Green Island (Rideau River) in Ottawa.
Dressed as an artillery officer and his medical bag nearby, as he writes.
The statue shows the destruction of the battlefield and, at his feet, the poppies and all armed conflict since.
While a copy of that statue was erected at Guelph Civic Museum in 2015.
Mapping McCrae’s life
Our Canadian cousins, and Grandpa Murty served in the Canadian Army in the Great War, helpfully walk us through McCrae’s life.
Through Guelph Museums’ excellent map journal which takes us on a global journey treading in the Great Man’s footsteps.
McCrae packed a lot into his 46 years.
Fom Ontario to Baltimore, taking in the Boer War in South Africa, to Ieper in Belgium to his last resting place in Boulogne, France where he died of pneumonia in 1918.
And he is rightly commemorated across the world.
Lest we forget
And in Ieper where he wrote his stirring words.
On seeing poppies around the grave of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer in 1915 and first published a century ago next month in Punch.
At the The Cloth Hall in its permanent war museum, the In Flanders Fields Museum,
And a short biographical memorial to the doctor, soldier and poet in the St George Memorial Church in the Medieval town.
While McCrae’s great friend Lieutenant Helmer’s name is inscribed on Panel 10 of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres.
One of the 54,896 soldiers who have no known grave in the battlefields of the Ypres Salient.
And it is those, all the Fallen, Great Uncles Willie and Patrick and John McCrae.
And rest assured we ‘hold the torch high’.