In Flanders fields, the poppies blow. Between
the crosses, row on row. Yeah, it's arguably
one of the most famous openings to any piece
of literature in the 20th century. Those lines
just carry a very specific heavy weight for anyone
who hears them. Absolutely. So welcome to the
Deep Dive. Today we have a really fascinating
journey laid out for you. We are looking at a
comprehensive Wikipedia biography of a man whose
words you have almost certainly heard, probably
on a, you know, a crisp November morning while
pinning a red paper flower to your lapel. Right,
the remembrance poppy. Exactly. But while you
likely know the poem, you probably don't know
the incredible and frankly deeply contradictory
life of the man who actually wrote it, John McCrae.
The poem itself has become so monumental, so
ingrained in our global culture of remembrance
that it has almost entirely eclipsed the human
being holding the pen. Yeah. And when you actually
look at the source material of his life, you
realize what a profoundly complex human being
he was. That is exactly our mission for you today.
we are going to look right past the heavy mythology
of those famous verses to uncover the real John
McCrae, because we are talking about a man who
was simultaneously a brilliant life -saving healer,
a fiercely dedicated soldier, and a, well...
completely reluctant literary icon. He really
didn't set out to be a famous poet. No, not at
all. OK, let's unpack this, because if you really
want a shortcut to being well informed about
a historical legend, you have to start at the
beginning, long before the battlefields of Europe.
Right. So we find ourselves in Guelph, Ontario
in the year 1872. That's when McCrae is born
to Scottish immigrants. And the biography notes
that his father was a veteran of the Fenian raids
and a prominent local figure. Yeah, and right
away we see the first major tension in his life
between his ambition and his physical reality.
But before we get into that tension, I want to
clarify something for you, the listener. Yeah,
the source mentions the Finian raids in passing,
but that is a piece of history that usually gets
glossed over. The Finians were essentially an
Irish Republican organization based in the United
States. And in the mid to late 19th century,
they actually launched armed incursions into
Canadian territory, which sounds wild today.
Right. They were trying to hold Canada hostage
to force Britain to leave Ireland. So McCrae's
father wasn't just a guy who liked wearing a
uniform. He had actively defended his local community.
against literal cross -border invasions. That
establishes a very real, deeply ingrained military
pedigree in that household from day one. Completely.
And that context is vital because it sets up
the expectations placed on young John. He was
incredibly driven. I mean, he was the very first
student from Gulf to win a scholarship to the
University of Toronto. Wow. Yeah. He was a young
man in a hurry, completely dedicated to his studies.
But his body simply wouldn't cooperate. Our source
notes that despite this immense drive, he suffered
from severe lifelong asthma. In fact, it was
so debilitating that he was forced to take an
entire year off from his university studies just
to recover. I think we really need to pause and
think about what a year off for asthma meant
in the 1890s because today, if you have an asthma
attack, you just reach for a rescue inhaler.
Exactly. It's manageable. But back then, medical
treatments for respiratory failure were primitive
and honestly often brutal. They didn't have corticosteroids
treatment, sometimes involved inhaling the fumes
of burning powders, taking heavy sedatives or
or just sitting upright in a chair for days on
end, fighting for every single breath agonizing
to be forced out of university for a year meant
he was likely completely incapacitated. This
wasn't a childhood ailment. He just outgrew this
respiratory vulnerability would haunt him and
actively in his life until the day he died. Yet
he pushes through. He returns to school, finishes
his BA, and then pivots to medicine. And his
medical career was nothing short of meteoric.
To help pay his own medical school tuition, he
actually tutored other students. Right. And there's
a detail in the source that really speaks to
his character. Two of the students he tutored
went on to become among the first female doctors
in Ontario. See. That is a detail that really
stands out to me. The 1890s medical establishment
was notoriously hostile to women. For McCray
to actively tutor female medical students shows
a level of progressivism and dedication to the
craft of medicine itself, completely regardless
of the gender politics of the era. He is focused
purely on excellence. He graduates in 1898. And
from there, his resume reads like a who's who
of elite medical institutions. Where does he
go? Well, he works at Toronto General Hospital.
He has down in Maryland to work at the prestigious
Johns Hopkins Hospital, where his brother Thomas
was already a professor of medicine. OK. He goes
to the University of Vermont, where he is appointed
a professor of pathology. He teaches at McGill
University in Montreal. He becomes a resident
pathologist at Montreal General Hospital, then
moves to the Royal Victoria Hospital. He is everywhere.
He even crosses the Atlantic to study in England,
becoming a member of the Royal College of Physicians.
I just, how does someone with a respiratory system
that actively tries to shut down on him manage
that kind of relentless, grueling schedule? He
isn't just surviving. He is bouncing between
countries, establishing himself at the absolute
pinnacle of a Dorian medicine. He even co -authored
a college pathology textbook in 1912. Right.
So you naturally picture a man deeply embedded
in the dusty world of science, a very stern,
maybe sepia -toned Which brings us to another
contradiction, because he wasn't that dusty academic
at all. He was incredibly vibrant. The source
shares an amazing anecdote from 1910. Oh, the
canoe trip. Yes. He goes on a canoe trip to Hudson
Bay, serving as the expedition physician for
Lord Grey, who was the governor general of Canada
at the time. A 3 ,000 mile canoe trip into the
Canadian wilderness. That is an arduous journey,
even for a completely healthy person, let alone
someone with severe asthma. And Lord Gray later
wrote to McCray, marveling at his company. Gray
said, and I quote, I believe the 3 ,000 miles
of our travels were illumined by as many stories.
I love that quote. It tells you exactly why this
matters. McCray wasn't a somber detached figure
brooding over life and death. He was a highly
social, witty storyteller. He was charming, he
was an adventurer, and he was deeply respected
as a pillar of society long before the dark clouds
of war ever gathered over Europe. It's wild to
think of him telling stories around a campfire
with the Governor General because there's this
entirely different, much darker side to McCray
that was developing at the exact same time, a
deep -seated obsession with the military. Yeah.
Which runs completely at odds with his oath as
a doctor to do no harm. And it started remarkably
early. Remember that military pedigree from his
father we talked about? The Fenian Raids guy?
Right. The source notes his father organized
and commanded the Gelfield artillery. So at just
14 years old, young John McCrae joins his father's
unit as a bugler. 14. That's practically a child.
And he wasn't just playing at being a soldier.
He won a prize as the best cadet in Ontario.
And it wasn't just parade ground stuff either.
In 1899, he volunteers for active service in
the Second Boer War in South Africa. Now, for
you listening who might not be familiar, the
Boer War was a brutal, grueling conflict between
the British Empire and the Boer Republics in
southern Africa. Very harsh conditions. Extremely.
It was characterized by guerrilla warfare and
widespread disease. McCray is out there as a
lieutenant in the Canadian field artillery, fighting
and skirmishes across the Orange Free State in
the Transvaal. He even earns the Queen's South
Africa medal with three clasps. Those clasps
represent participation in specific major operations
or campaigns. So he was a deeply seasoned combat
veteran before the 20th century had barely even
started. He eventually rose to the rank of major
in the artillery before stepping back into the
reserve in 1904 to focus on that meteoric medical
career we just discussed. Which brings us to
the First World War. It's 1914. Britain declares
war on Germany, which automatically means Canada
is at war too. Put yourself in those shoes for
a second. McCray is 41 years old. He has a thriving,
prestigious medical practice. He has severe asthma.
He could have easily sat this one out. No one
would have questioned his bravery. He already
had a medal from South Africa. But he volunteers
anyway. He does. And he wrote a letter to a friend
explaining why. And the quote from our source
is just incredibly powerful. He wrote, I'm really
rather afraid. but more afraid to stay at home
with my conscience. What's fascinating here is
the profound sense of duty that single sentence
reveals. You really have to sit with that. He
is admitting fear, which is a deeply human rational
response to industrialized warfare, but his moral
compass, his perceived obligation to his countrymen.
simply overrides his instinct for self -preservation.
It's incredible. He was an established middle
-aged man, yet he felt morally compelled to plunge
back into the horrors of combat. Now, with a
medical resume like that, he obviously went straight
into the medical corps, right? I mean, the military
must have seen a brilliant pathologist and immediately
put him in a hospital. Actually, no. He fought
to stay with the guns. Yeah, he is appointed
as medical officer and major of the 1st Brigade,
Canadian Field Artillery. He wanted to be on
the front lines with the artillerymen. And a
year later, in 1915, when he is officially ordered
to leave the artillery and take command of a
medical hospital, he is absolutely furious. So
he vents to his friend, CLC Allenson. He tells
him exactly what he thinks about being pulled
away from his beloved guns to go heal people.
His exact words were, Allenson, all the goddamn
doctors in the world will not win this bloody
war. What we need is more and more fighting men.
It's a jarring quote. To hear the author of a
poem of such tender mourning speaking with such
aggressive martial frustration really highlights
the internal conflict of the man. It really does.
He was one of the greatest medical minds of his
generation, resentful that he was forced to save
lives when he felt his duty was to fight. Speaking
of his internal life, the source does touch briefly
on his private life, which he kept very guarded.
He wrote weekly letters to his mother, and he
did propose to his sister -in -law, Nona Gwyn,
but was refused. Right. And as we look at his
personal life, our source material mentions a
modern debate that we should briefly cover. In
2011, a museum in Ottawa, the Bytown Museum,
sparked some controversy by questioning his sexuality
and suggesting he might have been gay. And we
want to be very clear with you, the listener,
that we are just imparting what is in the source
material here. We aren't endorsing any specific
viewpoints or taking sides in this historical
debate. We are simply reporting on the contents
of the Wikipedia biography. Exactly. To provide
the full context from that source, it neutrally
notes that the museum's own director of development
later distanced himself from the Furthermore,
McCrae biographers and the curator of the McCrae
House state that there is absolutely no historical
evidence that McCrae was gay. So it remains a
point of modern contention, but not one supported
by the primary biographers. Let's shift our focus
back to the battlefields of Europe because this
is where his life reaches its tragic, defining
crescendo. It is 1915, the Second Battle of Ypres.
This is a crucible. The Second Battle of Ypres
is infamous for being the first mass use of poison
gas on the Western Front. The conditions described
in the source are visceral. McCray is treating
the wounded from a hastily dug eight by eight
foot bunker. Measure that out in your mind. Eight
feet by eight feet. That is the size of a small
walk -in closet. It's tiny. And this bunker is
carved right into the dirt of a dike along the
Iser Canal, just a couple of miles north of Ypres.
This former university professor, this man who
canoed with the governor general, is now crammed
into a tiny muddy hole in the earth, desperately
trying to patch up catastrophically broken soldiers
as the world literally explodes around her. The
conditions must have been horrific. The noise,
the blood, the sheer terror of it. And remember,
he is doing this while his own lungs are compromised
by severe asthma. It was during this relentless
sensory nightmare that the catalyst for his immortal
poem occurred. A close friend of McCray's and
a former militia member, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer,
was killed in the battle. Helmer was buried in
a makeshift grave, just a simple wooden cross.
And it was the very next day, May 3, 1915, that
McCray found himself sitting on the back of a
medical field ambulance near an advanced dressing
post at Essex Farm. He was looking out. at the
spoiled earth of the battlefields and the fresh
cemeteries of Flanders. The artillery had churned
up the soil, which actually brings poppy seeds
to the surface and exposes them to light. That's
fascinating. So despite the utter devastation,
nature was stubbornly asserting itself. Wild,
blood -red poppies were already beginning to
bloom in great numbers between the crosses that
marked the graves. There, on the back of that
ambulance, processing the raw grief of losing
his friend, the artillery man, who hated being
a doctor, wrote in Flanders fields. The poem
itself is classified as a Threnody. It's a specific
genre of lament, a poem of mourning, but what
makes it so striking is that it's written from
the perspective of the dead themselves. Right.
We are the dead, short days ago. We lived, felt
dawn, saw sunset glow. It forces the reader into
an immediate, unbreakable intimacy with the fallen.
You aren't just observing their sacrifice. They're
speaking directly to you. The journey of that
poem into the public consciousness is fascinating.
It was published anonymously later that year
in December 1915 in a British magazine called
Punch. And it just exploded. It became swiftly,
wildly popular all over the world. Its impact
was immediate and staggering. It was translated
into multiple languages. There's even a Latin
version that begins in Agribelgico. It was used
in countless fundraising campaigns to support
the war effort. The emotional resonance was universal.
You have to wonder how a private, reserved guy
handles sudden global fame. Yeah. How did he
react? Apparently he was mostly just amused by
the incompetence of the publishers, because even
though he was suddenly a household name, they
misspelled his name as McCree in the magazine's
index. Oh, that's frustrating. He joked to friends
that he just wished they would get to printing
his name correctly. But ultimately, his biographer
notes, he was satisfied if the poem enabled men
to see where their duty lay. Duty was always
his North Star. He kept working, even as his
own health began to fail him drastically. That
brings us to his final years, which sound absolutely
agonizing. From June 1915 onward, he was commanding
No. 3 Canadian General Hospital near Boulogne
-sur -Mer in France. For eight months, this hospital
operated out of Durbar tents. A Durbar tent is
a massive ornate canvas structure traditionally
used by Indian royalty for large gatherings or
courts. The source notes these specific tents
were donated by the Begum of Bhopal, who was
a female Muslim ruler of a princely state in
India to support the British war effort. It's
a generous donation, but think about the practical
reality of it. These are tents designed for the
blazing heat of India to allow maximum airflow.
Now they are pitched in the freezing, rainy mud
of northern France. The medical staff and the
patients suffered through terrible storms, massive
floods and biting frosts before finally being
moved into an old Jesuit college. You have to
imagine what that damp, freezing environment
was doing to a man who had suffered from severe
asthma his entire life. It was a recipe for disaster.
His immune system was undoubtedly compromised
by the stress, the environment, and his chronic
condition. Tragically, his body simply gave out.
On January 28, 1918, while still commanding the
hospital, John McCrae died. He was 45 years old.
The source states the cause of death was pneumonia,
complicated by extensive pneumococcus meningitis.
For you listening, pneumococcus meningitis is
an infection that spreads to the lining of the
brain and spinal cord. Which is brutal. Before
the invention of modern antibiotics, it was an
agonizing, terrifying way to die. He suffered
immensely at the end, and he didn't even live
to see the armistice. He was buried the very
next day in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
section of Wimero Cemetery, just up the coast
from Boulogne. The details of his funeral provided
in the source are so deeply moving. He was buried
with full military honors. His coffin was draped
in a flag and borne on a gun carriage. The mourners
included General Sir Arthur Curry, the commander
of the Canadian Corps, along with many of McCray's
friends and hospital staff. The detail that really
lingers is about his horse, his beloved charger
named Bonfire, who had been with him all the
way from Quebec. Yeah. Bonfire led the funeral
procession. And in a traditional military symbol
of fallen cavalry, McCrae's boots were placed
reversed in the stirrups. The riderless horse
is one of the most poignant symbols of military
loss. If you go to Wimero's cemetery today, you'll
see a unique detail about his resting place.
His gravestone is placed completely flat on the
ground. All the stones in that section are flat,
actually, because the sandy soil near the coast
is too unstable to hold them upright. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, The legacy he left
behind is almost unfathomable for a man who died
so relatively young. Beyond the poem, his medical
contributions are still honored. The Canadian
Medical Association awards the John McCrae Memorial
Medal to Health Services members of the Canadian
Armed Forces for exemplary service. He was designated
a person of national historic significance in
Canada. There are statues of him in Ottawa and
in his hometown of Guelph. There are schools
named after him. There's even a Mount McCrae
in British Columbia. In Inipres, Belgium, right
near the muddy dike where the history happened,
the Cloth Hall houses a permanent war museum
named the Inflanders Fields Museum. So what does
this all mean? We started this deep dive looking
for the man behind the myth. We found a brilliantly
educated doctor who helped women break into medicine
when few others would. We found a man who could
charm a governor general on a 3000 mile canoe
trip. We found a fiercely proud artillery man
who survived the Boer War and who later hated
the fact that he was ordered to save lives instead
of take them. And we found a man sitting on the
back of an ambulance, exhausted, grieving his
friend, surrounded by the absolute worst of human
destruction, who somehow noticed the resilient
beauty of a flower. And in doing so, he permanently
cemented the red poppy as the universal symbol
of remembrance. It is a staggering legacy, a
complex tapestry of a life. Thank you for walking
through it with us. But before we officially
sign off, I want to leave you, the listener,
with one final provocative thought to mull over
on your own. Our source mentions that... In Flanders
Fields was printed extensively in the United
States at a time when the U .S. government was
still just contemplating joining the war, and
it was often printed alongside a reply poem written
by an American named R .W. Lillard. You see,
the closing lines of McCray's poem are a challenge
to the living. To you from failing hands, we
throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high. It's
a call to action. Exactly. And Lillard's reply
poem answered that challenge directly across
the border. He wrote, fear not that you have
died for naught, the torch ye threw to us we
caught. In our modern era, an era defined by
constant information overload and sadly ongoing
global conflicts, what does it truly mean for
us, the readers of today, to catch the torch?
That's the real question. How do we keep faith
with those who have died? Beyond just wearing
a paper poppy once a year, McCray challenged
his readers not to let the dead sleep in vain.
How are we answering him today? Thank you so
much for joining us on this deep dive into the
extraordinary contradictory life of John McCrae.
We hope you walk away not just well informed,
but inspired to look a little closer at the history
all around us. Until next time.