PRINCE GEORGE – Set up in various locations around the city, the Royal Canadian Legion’s Poppy campaign launched Friday (Oct.27).
“Today is the day, in actual fact, as the Governor General was presented the other day and and our Lieutenant General of B.C. was presented yesterday. So today is officially opening as the Governor General has their poppy.”
The poppy is representative of Flanders Field following the battle of Ypres in Belgium in the First World War,” explains John Scott with the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 43. “Well, of course, it was full of poppies and it was of course, it was a huge battle and there were a lot of soldiers buried there in Flanders Fields.”
Lieutenant Colonel and battle surgeon John McCrae was so moved by what he saw, he penned a 15-line poem on Flanders Field “… where the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row…”
“He was a medic. And he was looking out across Flanders Fields, where all the people were buried, but all the poppies were blowing there. And he wrote that poem and he threw it away and somebody else picked it up and they took it back to England and they produced it.”
Today, the poppy is worn to honor those who served, past and present. And there are more vets than many think. We’ve got quite a few veterans. And of course, when we see that we have left, we have lots of veterans who are standing, who are young and we have veterans of Afghanistan and all that kind of stuff. They’re they’re they’re the veterans we are looking after today.”
The proceeds of poppy sales stay here.
“All the poppy money goes into what we call the poppy account. And every branch has their own poppy account and it is used for veterans. And their families, of course. And that’s pretty well what it used for. We do donate some poppy money back to the community who actually supports us.”
So until Remembrance Day, where a poppy to say thanks to all those who sacrificed so much for the freedoms we enjoy today.
