Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae Floral Clock

The Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae Floral Clock was erected by the City of Guelph in Riverside Park to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. In 1972 there was a previous floral clock designed in his honour and featured the words "In Flanders Fields the poppies blow".

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae was the Canadian soldier, a doctor and teacher, who wrote In Flanders Fields during the First World War. Born in Guelph, Ontario in 1872, he served with an artillery battery in the South African War and had a successful civilian medical career. When the First World War broke out in 1914, the patriotic 41-year-old enlisted again and would be appointed as a medical officer with the First Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery.

During the Second Battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915, McCrae was tending to the wounded in a part of Belgium traditionally called Flanders. On May 2, a close friend was killed in action and this painful loss inspired McCrae to write In Flanders Fields the next day. It would be published in Britain’s Punch magazine and quickly became one of the best-known poems of the war, helping make the poppy an international symbol of remembrance. Sadly, Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae would not survive the conflict, dying of illness in January 1918.

2022
JOHN MCCRAE 150TH

JULY 28, 1972
IN FLANDERS FIELDS THE POPPIES BLOW