Yesterday, I started wearing my poppy. I understand it started October 24th, so I was a little late. Canadians typically wear the poppy during the remembrance period leading up to Remembrance Day on November 11, placing it on the left side near the heart. Each year, the Royal Canadian Legion distributes millions of poppies across the country. Donations collected through the campaign support veterans, serving military members, and their families.
The poppy became associated with remembrance because of the battlefields of Flanders in Belgium during the First World War. Intense artillery bombardments churned the soil, allowing dormant poppy seeds to flourish among soldiers' graves and across devastated battlefields. The Canadian poppy campaign celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2021, marking a century since the poppy was first adopted as Canada's symbol of remembrance.
The flower gained worldwide recognition through the poem "In Flanders Fields", written in 1915 by Canadian physician and soldier John McCrae after the death of a friend in battle. Today, when Canadians wear a poppy, they are continuing a tradition that traces from the battlefields of Europe, through John McCrae's famous poem, to more than a century of remembrance across Canada.
