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Statues to honour soldier-poet McCraeThe Canadian PressOTTAWAA century after he scribbled the simple but poignant stanzas of “In Flanders Fields, John McCrae is being honoured with two statues.One of the larger-than-life bronzes will be installed in Ottawa on May 3, while a duplicate will be unveiled in McCrae’s hometown of Guelph, Ont., later this summer.The Ottawa statue will be placed at the National Artillery Memorial on Sussex Drive, just east of the downtown core.For those who think of McCrae as a doctor and a poet, the location might seem an odd choice, but his first calling was as an artilleryman. And his brother gunners want to honour that heritage.Jim Selbie, a retired general who now holds the honorary post of Colonel Commandant of The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery, said McCrae exemplified the concept of the citizen-soldier:“He had two professions, both of which he had a great commitment to, that of a physician but equally that as a gunner. You still see that today amongst a lot of our reserve officers and I think that's something to celebrate.Mike McKay, a Guelph businessman and a retired reservist lieutenant-coloncl, was one of the driving forces behind the statue project.“I’m the guy that volunteered, and being a soldier I should have known to never volunteer, he joked in a recent interview.McKay helped organized a fundraising project to find the $300,000 for the Guelph statue. A second effort raised about $460,000 for the Ottawa statue.The Guelph project was covered mainly by private donations, although the Ottawa end was supported by help from National Defence and Veterans Affairs as well as an unexpected $50,000 from the government of Flanders, in Belgium.The statue itself, by Canadian sculptor Ruth Abernethy, shows McCrae sitting on a broken tree trunk, his cap perched on his medical bag in front of him and poppies scattered on the ground.In 1915, McCrae held a unique position. At the start of the war, he sought to rejoin the artillery. He had commanded a Canadian battery during the Boer War and wanted back into combat.But by then, he was also a physician and the army wanted doctors more than gunners. So he became major in an artillery uniform, simultaneously second-in-command of the 1st Canadian artillery brigade and its brigade surgeon.John McCrae
Newspaper Details
Medicine Hat News
Medicine Hat, Alberta, CA
Mon, Apr 20, 2015
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Donna M.
CA 07 May 2017
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