Remembering John McCrae: Soldier, Doctor, Poet

Remembering John McCrae is filled with period photographs, postcards and other memorabilia and McCrae’s own sketches and writing. Even if he had never written the definitive WWI poem, McCrae led a noteworthy life. Born and raised in Guelph, Ontario, he studied medicine in Toronto and at Johns Hopkins Hospital under William Osler, another famous Canadian doctor. He served as a military officer in the Boer War, was part of an expedition to Hudson’s Bay with the Governor General Earl Grey, worked as a pathologist in Montreal, and served as a field surgeon in Belgium beginning in 1915. When “In Flanders Fields” was first published in December 1915 it became immediately popular, but McCrae never lived to see how it became the inspiration for Remembrance Day—he died of pneumonia in January of 1918, before the war had ended. Linda Granfield is the author of High Flight: a story of World War II and Where Poppies grow: A World War I Companion