John McCrae

John McCrae was born in 1872 in Guelph, Ontario, the son of a military officer. He studied at the University of Toronto, earning a degree in medicine, and trained further at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He served as an artillery officer in the Second Boer War in South Africa, then returned to medicine in Montreal, where he taught pathology at McGill University and worked at several hospitals. When the First World War began in 1914 he enlisted in the Canadian army as a brigade surgeon. In 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium, he treated the wounded for weeks under heavy fire. After the death of his friend Alexis Helmer, he wrote 'In Flanders Fields', a short poem spoken by the dead soldiers buried beneath the poppies. It was published in the magazine Punch in December 1915 and became one of the best-known poems of the war; it helped make the poppy a symbol of remembrance. McCrae later commanded a military hospital in France. He died of pneumonia and meningitis in 1918.

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