Lt. Col. John McCrae, c1914. Photographer: William Notman and Son. Guelph Museums, Reference No. M968.354.
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae will be honoured with two statues 100 years after he wrote the poem, In Flanders Fields.
One of the larger-than-life bronzes will be installed in Ottawa on May 3, while a duplicate will be unveiled in McCrae’s hometown of Guelph, Ontario, later this summer.
Mike McKay, a Guelph businessman and a retired reservist lieutenant-colonel, was one of the driving forces behind the statue project. He helped organize a fundraising project to fund the $300,000 for the Guelph statue. A second effort raised about $460,000 for the Ottawa statue that included an unexpected $50,000 contribution from the government of Flanders, in Belgium.
McCrae wrote the first draft of his famous poem on May 3, 1915, following the second battle of Ypres and after presiding at the funeral of a friend and former student who had been killed in battle.
Read more and see a photo of the statue in the Times Colonist article.
Lt. Col. McCrae’s service file is among the almost 150,000 Library and Archives has digitized to date.
