A poppy lapse

Is it my imagination, or have people gotten very silly about poppies in the last decade?

Over the past decade in particular, it seems we have some sort of poppy kerfuffle every Remembrance Day.

One year it was the Battle of the White Poppies versus the Red Poppies. Wearers of the white poppies thought red poppies glorified war, and red-poppy-wearers thought white poppy proponents were either presumptuous or unpatriotic.

Another year, we had the using-flags-to-anchor-your-poppy controversy, in which legionnaires declared that poppies were "sacred" and it was improper to fix them with anything other than the flimsy pins they come with.

This year, it's - heaven help us - Don Cherry. For those of you who are not Canadian and/or do not view hockey as the best thing created, Don Cherry is a long-time hockey-coach-cum-commentator, renowned for his unbelievably high collars, eye-watering suits, and loud, unvarnished pronouncements. This past weekend, he apparently thought the Saturday night hockey game was the ideal platform for airing his view that "you people" who "come here, whatever it is" "should pay a buck for a poppy". Apparently Cherry spotted some poppy-less people, who he believed to be immigrants. Let's see, how? They were darker-skinned than he is? They were dressed differently than he is? (No, forget that second one; we're all dressed differently than he is.)

Anyway, he's apparently offended by non-poppy-wearing newcomers, given that they're now living in the land of "milk and honey", courtesy of the sacrifice of Canadian soldiers.

Let's leave aside the horrors that many new Canadians have escaped, and the sacrifices they themselves have made. If the wearing of the poppy is mandatory, as Cherry believes - as I write this, he's just defiantly said that all Canadians should wear a poppy - doesn't that negate the very freedoms for which so many died?

I wear a red poppy, secured with a decorative pin. That's my choice. My fellow Canadians, darn it, have the right to wear a red poppy, a white poppy, a poppy with a pin, a poppy secured with flag pin, or no poppy at all.

That's their choice, Mr. Cherry. You have no right to bully them into doing things your way.

Now, I gather that Don Cherry has finally been fired. I'm not sure that this will solve anything.

I do worry that his comments will give courage to others, who will make life in this land of milk and honey less sweet for those who have committed the sin of daring not to be born here.

Sorrow, remembrance and blood

Living in The Nation's Capital has an extra resonance in the days leading up to Remembrance Day. Not only are we in close proximity to The National War Museum and key Armed Forces offices and bases, but being resident near Rockcliffe Park, our daughters have attended school with children and relatives of prime ministers and high ranking officers, both foreign and otherwise. Remembrance Day is taken very seriously here. The wearing of the poppy (which, by the way, I think is a rather better-looking poppy than that available in Britain) is not exactly mandatory, but the custom is heavily observed, and Ottawa streets are strewn with lost poppies, dropped from the flimsy pins.

Coming from Victoria, where I grew up between the naval base and the army base (not that pleasant experience for an adolescent girl, soldiers and sailors being what they are), I bring my own strategy for making my poppy stay put. I wrap the end of the pin with scotch tape. However, Ottawans have another excellent method which doesn't work for my thick Irish cape, but does nicely for blouses and lapels. They removed the pin and black felt poppy centre and replace it with a maple leaf or Canadian flag pin, the kind you stick straight though and anchor with a metal clutch on the other side of the fabric.

Lately, there's been a debate in the papers about wearing poppies. A columnist in The Ottawa Citizen worried that poppy-wearing might symbolize support for Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. I was rather startled by this idea as I've never viewed wearing the poppy as supporting the idea of any war. I wear it because I associate it with sorrow, blood, and remembrance.

There has also been a flurry of letters to the editor in the debate over In Flanders Fields, which being written by Dr John McCrae of Guelph, Ontario after watching a close friend die at Ypres and before succumbing to pneumonia himself, is a staple of Canadian Remembrance Day ceremonies. John Finnemore recently discussed his problems with the poem in his blog, and once again, I was a bit perplexed. John McCrae was a doctor in the army for both the Boer and First World Wars. He would have seen the very worst war can offer. I don't think he had any rosy ideas about war being glorious or desirable, although I do think he thought it was necessary. The stanza both the writer of the Letter to the Editor and John Finnemore had trouble with was the third one which begins: Take up our quarrel with the foe . . .

Well, I don't boycott plays like The Merchant of Venice for anti-Semitism, nor books like Huckleberry Finn for its use of the "n-word", nor pretty much anything written or performed over the centuries for its depiction of women. Art is a reflection of its era. Good art transcends this. I happen to think both statements apply to In Flanders Fields, which, like the poppy, expresses sorrow, remembrance, and blood.