Hot Trends: Protesters need to learn history; the poppy is already a symbol of peace

Honouring our war dead, and the sacrifices of those who served and survived, ought not to be as controversial as it too often seems to be.

But, again, in what is sadly becoming an early November tradition, this year's Remembrance Day is being marked by controversy. A group of students at the University of Ottawa has embraced the left-leaning Rideau Institute's initiative to wear white poppies, instead of the traditional red ones distributed by the Royal Canadian Legion, and intends to distribute them during the Nov. 11 ceremonies at the national Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa. The logic behind the campaign - if logic is the term - is that a white poppy supports peace, while a red one glorifies war.

Celyn Dufay, one of the reported "handful" of UofO students getting behind the white poppy campaign, told the Sun News Network that, "Young people don't want to celebrate war. We want to work for peace."

Hmmkay, then. Not a history major, I'm guessing.



The red poppy is inherently a symbol of peace. Not just of peace as a concept - pleasant a concept as it is - but as the hard-won peace that hundreds of thousands of Canadians, and our allies, earned at such great cost. The poppy is not a symbol of our victory - a national flag or a military battle ensign or guidon would serve more than ably in that role. Poppies are not a symbol of military conquest and national glory; indeed, they are not a symbol of any nation at all.

Though no Canadian should need to be reminded, it is worth ever so briefly recapping why the poppy was chosen as the symbol of remembrance. As is so memorably told in John McCrae's In Flanders Fields, the poppies were the Belgian wildflower that went forth and multiplied so prodigiously in the blood-soaked, artillery churned soil of First World War battlefields. They added a rare splash of colour, and life, in the blasted landscapes of that brutal conflict. And the poppies bloomed over the shattered bodies and among the trenches of the Allies and our enemies alike.

There can be no better symbol of peace than that. The very existence of a white poppy campaign, ostensibly to promote peace, is insulting by its implication that the red poppy glorifies war. No one who saw the poppies blooming in the blood of 1915, or has walked the silent rows of white headstones in the Commonwealth war cemeteries that are still carefully tended throughout Europe, sees any glory there.

War is, as the cliché tells us, hell. In modern times, we Westerners have been spared the full horrors of total global conflict. But there are still Canadians today who remember the Second World War, even fought in it. There are also thousands of Canadians with us today who served in Afghanistan, and countless Canadians who loved or knew someone who went to that far-off land and never returned. There are the Canadians who died in peacetime, in accidents at home and abroad, while standing guard in Western Europe across from the might of the Soviet Red Army, or while doing their best to bring peace to war-torn lands abroad. And, of course, there are all those that these peace-time casualties left behind.

I wonder how much they feel Celyn Dufay has to teach them about sacrifice and the glorification of war.

Personally, I see no problem with Canadians taking pride in what our country has accomplished on the battlefield. War is hell, but just wars are sometimes necessary. The brutal reality is this - if guys like my grandfather hadn't flown bombers against German cities during the flower of their youth, guys like my brother-in-law's grandfather would never have gotten out of Auschwitz alive. There is evil in the world, and some problems that can only be solved through the controlled application of violence. That is a tragic fact, but less tragic than what happens when the good guys decide they're too kind-hearted to fight the bad ones, or fail to prepare for the possibility of war and are unable to raise an army in time.

But that's not glorifying war. It's acknowledging what others have done on our behalf, at great (sometimes ultimate) personal sacrifice. War should not be glorified, but it should be remembered, so that the peace we're lucky enough to enjoy today can be fully appreciated. The poppy is how we do that - and I'm wearing my red one with pride. National Post