Sonia Day: The remarkable story that gave rise to the tradition of wearing a poppy - Toronto Star

Amid dreadful carnage on the battlefield, in flattened fields destroyed by tanks and where men died in the thousands, these flowers flourished.

Sonia Day is the author of 10 books. Her latest is the award-winning 'Newfoundland Lunch Party, A Sisters of the Soil Novel — with Recipes.'

With Nov. 11 around the corner, it’s time to shine the spotlight on a fascinating flower.

I’m talking of course about the poppy that’s become indelibly associated in our minds with Remembrance Day.

We’re all familiar with the war veterans who sit patiently outside supermarkets every year, hoping that we’ll stop, drop a few coins in the collecting box and see fit to pin that little red symbol on our lapels. (In fact, I usually wind up stopping several times for a replacement, because, no matter hard I try, I can never get the darn pins to stay put on my jacket.) And what a delight these old gentlemen (and sometimes ladies) are, invariably polite and pleased to chat, even if the weather’s lousy.

Yet I wonder how many of us, as we participate in this ritual automatically every fall without thinking much about it, have any idea of the remarkable story that gave rise to the tradition of wearing a poppy.

It begins with the poppy itself: a wild species called Papaver Rhoeas, that’s also known by a host of simple names — Common Poppy, Corn Poppy, Field Poppy and Flanders Poppy. And it’s a pretty flower, but surprisingly fragile, reaching only about a foot high, with petals as thin as tissue paper which don’t last long and get blown off easily by the wind. (The ones I used to grow in my country garden in Belwood, Ont., never lasted more than a day or two.) Yet at the same time, Papaver Rhoeas possesses three amazing attributes. First, it’s prolific, churning out a staggering number of seeds — thousands from every relatively small pod. Second, those seeds can stay dormant in the ground, waiting to sprout for an extraordinarily long time — up to 80 to 100 years. And third, they actually prefer to grow in poor soil that’s been disturbed in some way. (I used to scratch the surface of my flower bed with a trowel, before sprinkling the seed.)

Thus, in 1915, at the height of the Great War, when Canadian soldier and doctor John McCrae was dispatched for duty to the countryside of Flanders, in Belgium, what he encountered there astonished him. Amid the dreadful carnage of the battlefields, where men were dying every day in their thousands, poppies were flourishing. They kept appearing, loads of them, in farmers’ fields flattened and churned up by tanks and on the makeshift graves of fallen soldiers. So on the day after the tragic death of a friend, he sat down and scribbled a poem on a scrap of paper, awed by the tenacity of those poppies.

It’s believed that McCrae then threw the paper out, thinking that what he wrote was worthless. But his poignant words, which he entitled “In Flanders Fields,” were apparently saved by fellow soldiers and later published in Punch magazine in London. And his little tribute, achingly beautiful in its brevity and simplicity, touched so many hearts that it quickly found an audience around the world in countries ravaged by war. 

One interesting wrinkle to this story is that the two people who seized upon the idea of using the poppies to commemorate the fallen and raise money for disabled survivors were both women, one American, one French.

In the U.S., a Georgia university professor named Moina Michael visited France during the Great War and was so touched by McCrae’s poem, she took to wearing a silk poppy on her lapel when she got home. And in 1921, after teaching a class to disabled servicemen, seeing the need to provide them with financial support, she managed to persuade both the American Legion and its British counterpart to adopt the poppy as a means of raising funds.

Meanwhile, in France, Anna Guerin, also a teacher, did much the same thing. She initially wanted to help the widows and orphans of war-devastated regions of France. But soon her idea of manufacturing artificial poppies to give out in return for a donation spread — including to Canada, where it’s now kept alive by the tireless efforts of The Royal Canadian Legion.

Aside from lauding the work of all involved in this annual event, what I find particularly heartwarming about the poppy story is the indomitability of Mother Nature. In spite of all the dreadful things we humans continue to inflict on her, she still finds a way to carry on. That’s a comforting thought right now when we are once again living in such an uncertain world.

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Sonia Day is the author of 10 books. Her latest is the award-winning 'Newfoundland Lunch Party, A Sisters of the Soil Novel — with Recipes.'