Flanders Field Park
Municipality/Province: Edmonton, AB
Memorial number: 48011-090
Type: Park, garden, plaque, storyboard
Address: 4415 McCrae Avenue
Location: Village of Griesbach
GPS coordinates: Lat: 53.6119334 Long: -113.5131618
Flanders Field Park was dedicated to Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae’s famous war poem, In Flanders Fields by the Canada Lands Company on June 23, 2004, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks).
On November 1, 2015, the park was officially dedicated to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the famous war poem, In Flanders Fields. The park features unique walkways and walls made of brick which mimic the trenches in the First World War, poppy beds, a bronze plaque with the poem in the author’s original handwriting, a storyboard with the story of McCrae and how he came to write the poem and another storyboard with the story of how the poem itself became tied to remembrance and the poppy became the symbol of remembrance.
Castle Downs Recreation Society were the driving force behind the storyboard. In November 2014, they began working with Canada Lands Company and local military reserve units – the 15th Field Ambulance reserve unit and the 20th Field Artillery Regiment – to help bring the project to life.
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae was 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.
Inscription found on memorial
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Street view
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