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he: Stay of th Eat-h Noiember over ten million poppies bloom in Canada. Dotting the lapels of half at Canada's population, this svmbol at remembrance mak . Is annual appearance as it has done each year since 1925 Although everybody knows what the poppy means, nobody is certain of how it all began. at how the poppy became so Closely associated with remembrance of Lhe war dead The association was certain- lynot new when the pp) was adopted in Canada in 192i At least a hundred and ten years before that time a correspon- dent wrote at how thickly popplns grcu over the graves of the dead He was speaking of the Napolcnntc War and tts campaigns in Flanders But a Canadian medical utticcr was chiefly responsible for this asmmatinn more so than an) nther single knouii factor John Mulfrde wits a tall. hm'ish 43-\P.’tl’~ftld member of the (amid n Medical Corps fmm (‘iue Ontario An urtillt‘r) veteran of the Boer War. he had the eye ot a gunner. the hand of ii surgeon. and the soul of a poet when he / went into the line at Ypres on April 22. tats That was the afternoon the enemy first used poison gas The first attack failed. so did the next and the next. For 17 days and nights the allies repulsed wave after wave of attackers During this period, McCrae wrote: “One can see the dead lying there an the front field. And in places where the enemy threw in an attack. they lie very thick on the slopes or the German trench- es Working trom a dressing Station on the bank of the Yser Penal. Lt ~C01' McCrae dressed hundreds of wounded nei ertakingott his clothes for the entire 17 days. Sometimes the dead or wounded actually rolled duer the bank lrom above into his dugout SumoL lime-z nhizc awaiting the arrival of batches of wounded, he would uatrh the men at .iork in the tiuriai plots which were quickli- titling tlp Then )IL‘ me and his unit ucrc relieved "We are wean- in body and weaner in mind The general tmpretslnn in my mind is one at a nightmzre' he wrote homc But McCrae came mit lit OPPY Ypres with 13 lines scrawled on a scrap of paper. The lines were a poem which started. "In Flanders fields the puppies blow These were the lines which are enshrined in the hearts of all soldiers who heard in them their lnl‘lEl‘mnSt Ihnughtsv McCrae was lhelr voice, The poem circulated as a folk song circulates. by livtng word of mouth. Men learned it with their hearts In the United States‘ the. poem inspired the American Legion to adopt the poppy as the symbol of Remembrance tn Cntindii. the po py was otticiaiiy adapted hyt 6 Great War Veterans Assoua Inn in tact on the suggestion of a Mrs E Guorm utFranL‘e But there [5 little dnuht that the impact of Itlct‘rae's poem inflilclict‘d this decision The poem speaks of Flanders fields But the suhlect is universal the fear at the dead that they will be torgt‘ttL-n that their death will have been in iaiii The «pirit at true Rememty rant-e. as simhnlized hy the pnpp\. must br: niir eternal ansuer Vthlch belies those fears