Mr. Speaker, “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row“. It was in the terrible shadow of those graves and the nearly 6,000 Canadian casualties of the Second Battle of Ypres that Guelph native, Colonel John McCrae, composed In Flanders Fields. We commemorate the anniversary of that battle, which began 100 years ago today.
Over the next two days, Canadian and other allied troops would face the first real deployment of chemical weapons as they fought through chlorine gas. Despite the heavy losses, nearly one in three, Canadians established themselves as a military force to be reckoned with.
I was so fortunate to visit Ypres last year and was astonished to think that so many young Canadians could have fought and died somewhere so serene. I felt I finally understood the full weight of our sacred obligation to Canadian veterans as the silence was broken by young Canadian students reading solemnly in turn, “If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields”.
Lest we forget.