6/29/2023 0 Comments Remembrance day poopyWhich countries use the poppy for remembrance?īesides Great Britain, where about 45 million poppies were distributed in 2010, according to BBC News, the practice is found most often in other Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and, after Prince Charles wore one on a visit there, South Africa. The following year, the Great War Veterans' Association of Canada (predecessor of the legion), at Guerin's urging, joined its British counterpart and officially adopted the poppy as its Flower of Remembrance.Ģ. Guerin, visiting the United States in 1920 learned of the custom when she met Michael and decided on her return home to sell handmade poppies to raise money for impoverished children in the war-ravaged areas of France. She took his admonition to keep faith with the dead (which by then included McCrae, who died of pneumonia the previous January) to heart and vowed to always wear a red poppy as a sign of remembrance.Ī Frenchwoman, Madame E. Moina Michael, an American teacher working at the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries' headquarters in New York, read McCrae's poem in November 1918 as the armistice ended the First World War. Thank an American for for the poppy's symbolic meaning Some other facts about the Remembrance Day poppy:ġ. McCrae, a medical officer serving near Ypres, Belgium, made the same connection in 1915, inspiring his immortal poem written during a break from his ceaseless work with the wounded during the bloody Second Battle of Ypres. John McCrae's famous poem, In Flanders Fields.īut according to the legion's history of the poppy, the association dates back more than a century before that, to the Napoleonic Wars, when it was noticed how poppies flourished on the graves of soldiers who had died in battle in Flanders, a region of northern France and Belgium. I used to assume the poppy's connection with the war dead came from the First World War and Canadian Col. However, the legion says it's okay to begin wearing the poppy as soon as its campaign begins. Somehow wearing this sombre commemoration of our soldiers' sacrifices during wartime seems to clash with the frivolity of a Halloween costume. Perhaps a fitting ironic symbolism of the blood spilt by so many for so little.The Royal Canadian Legion's annual poppy campaign kicked off last week but I like to wait until Halloween is over before pinning the distinctive symbol of remembrance to my jacket. They spread prolifically across the fields until it appeared as a sea of red. The earth that was stirred up by so many artillery shells in turn released the poppy seeds that would not normally have had the chance to germinate. It is said that the chalk soil of Flanders became rich in lime due to the rubble produced by the massive bombardments of battle. Poppies indeed became significant as a remembrance of war as prior to the Great War, poppies were rare in the fields of Flanders. The Legion had first been formed to help veterans and their families who had been left impoverished during the war and Haig was quick to adopt their idea as an excellent method to both honour the dead and help the living. In 1921, Madame Guerin and a group of French war widows approached the former British Commander-in-Chief, Earl Haig, at the Legion Headquarters in London, about the idea of selling artificial poppies to raise monies to help needy soldiers and their families. Guerin who was in turn inspired to take this idea home. Amongst them was the representative from France, Madame E. She thanked them for this gift and said that she would use the money to purchase poppies, relating to them John McCrae’s poem which had been her inspiration. Michaels, she had been given a small monetary gift by visiting delegates. During a meeting of the YMCA wartime secretaries in New York, which was hosted by Ms. Some claim that a young New Yorker by the name of Moira Michaels was the first to wear a poppy as a means of “keeping the faith” after reading a copy of “In Flanders Fields”. The story of how the poppy has become the symbol of remembrance has varying origins but the overall basis for the wearing of the poppy is without question, Captain John McCrae’s poem, “In Flanders Fields”. Whatever the reason, in Canada, the poppy has become to be known as the one universal symbol of remembrance. Others remember the sacrifices made in the world’s trouble spots such as Cyprus, Bosnia and most recently in Afghanistan. Millions of Canadians pin one to their lapel or hat each and every November 11th as a way of expressing their remembrance of the servicemen and women who gave their lives in two world wars and in Korea.
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