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CA-K174Culture & sport

John McCrae and “In Flanders Fields”

The sign at McCrae House, John McCrae’s birthplace in Guelph, Ontario, on Remembrance Day 2018.
The sign at McCrae House, John McCrae’s birthplace in Guelph, Ontario, on Remembrance Day 2018. McCrae Home · Peter K Burian · Photo source · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized for display; item previews may be cropped. The image remains under the licence shown.
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John McCrae (1872–1918), a physician born in Guelph, Ontario, joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps in 1914 and served overseas until his death. His poem “In Flanders Fields,” published anonymously in 1915, became one of the most celebrated poems of the First World War and made the poppy a lasting symbol of the Allied soldiers who died.

Scope & context

The poet and the poem’s significance, not the text of the poem or Remembrance Day itself (see CA-K052).

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