“In Flanders fields” at the Osler Library

In celebration of the centennial of this famous World War I poem, we are reposting this blog entry from Remembrance Day 2013. The two contemporary copies of John McCrae’s “In Flanders fields,” one written by the poet himself, housed in our collection will be on view tomorrow at the Osler Library, 3rd floor, McIntyre Medical Building, 3655 Promenade-Sir-William-Osler. Please keep an eye out as well for a special Global News segment tomorrow featuring this important document of Canadian history.


“In Flanders fields the poppies grow / Between the crosses, row on row”

John McCrae’s poem remains one of the most influential pieces of Canadian literature and gives us our most enduring World War I imagery: the red poppies.

Born in Guelph, Ontario, McCrae was a career soldier and practicing physician.FlandersFields Before the war, he worked at the Montreal General and the Royal Victoria Hospital, and taught at McGill. Although McCrae was a trained physician, he joined an army fighting unit at the outbreak of the First World War. There, he experienced some of the first chemical weapons attacks during the second battle of Ypres in Belgium. The story goes that McCrae penned his poem after the burial of a close friend and medical school colleague, when he noticed the poppies growing over the graves. This manuscript, written in McCrae’s hand, was left to the Osler Library among the literary archives of fellow physician and McGillian John Andrew Macphail. In this manuscript, McCrae ends the first line with the word “grow.” This is a change from the published version, in which the line finishes “blow.” McCrae wrote out this copy of the poem in a 1916 letter to a friend, Carleton Noyes, modestly mentioning that this piece had achieved some notoriety.

Photo of John McCrae with his dog, from the Osler Library Prints Collection, OPF000110

Photo of John McCrae with his dog, from the Osler Library Prints Collection, OPF000110

The library also has a second early copy of the poem. It is found in the diary of Clare Gass, which recounts her experiences as a nurse with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in France and England in 1915 and 1916. Gass was born in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, on 18 March 1887. She left home for Montreal to train as a nurse at the Montreal General Hospital School of Nursing from 1909 to 1912, working afterwards as a private nurse. After a brief training period in Quebec, she left for Europe in May of 1915 as a Lieutenant nursing sister with the Canadian Army Medical Corps, No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill). In her diary, “In Flanders Field” is copied out in an entry dated October 30th— nearly six weeks before the poem’s first publication in the magazine Punch on December 8, 1915. After that, it quickly became the most popular piece of poetry of the age and its central image an enduring symbol of loss.

“In Flanders fields” at the Osler Library

“In Flanders fields the poppies grow / Between the crosses, row on row”

John McCrae’s poem remains one of the most influential pieces of Canadian literature and gives us our most enduring World War I imagery: the red poppies. Born in Guelph, Ontario, McCrae was a career soldier and practicing physician. Before the war, he worked at the Montreal General and the Royal Victoria Hospital, and taught at McGill. Although McCrae was a trained physician, he joined an army fighting unit at the outbreak of the First World War. FlandersFieldsThere, he experienced some of the first chemical weapons attacks during the second battle of Ypres in Belgium. The story goes that McCrae penned his poem after the burial of a close friend and medical school colleague, when he noticed the poppies growing over the graves. This manuscript, written in McCrae’s hand, was left to the Osler Library among the literary archives of fellow physician and McGillian John Andrew Macphail. In this manuscript, McCrae ends the first line with the word “grow.” This is a change from the published version, in which the line finishes “blow.” McCrae wrote out this copy of the poem in a 1916 letter to a friend, Carleton Noyes, modestly mentioning that this piece had achieved some notoriety.

The library also has a second early copy of the poem. It is found in the diary of Clare Gass, which recounts her experiences as a nurse with the Canadian Army Medical Corps in France and England in 1915 and 1916. Gass was born in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, on 18 March 1887. She left home for Montreal to train as a nurse at the Montreal General Hospital School of Nursing from 1909 to 1912, working afterwards as a private nurse. After a brief training period in Quebec, she left for Europe in May of 1915 as a Lieutenant nursing sister with the Canadian Army Medical Corps, No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill). In her diary, “In Flanders Field” is copied out in an entry dated October 30th— nearly six weeks before the poem’s first publication in the magazine Punch on December 8, 1915. After that, it quickly became the most popular piece of poetry of the age.

 

 

Archival updates

ArchboxesWe’ve made a few additions to our archival database so far this summer and have a couple newer fonds described.

Two fonds have been updated to include recent accruals: the Canadian Health Libraries Association/ Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Canada fonds and the Osler Society of Montreal fonds.

The Jonathan Campbell Meakins fonds now has an online, searchable inventory list! The old (handwritten!) item-level descriptions are still available in the library if you need more detailed information, but we hope the online version will make things easier to discover. J. C. Meakins was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at McGill from 1941-1948, among various other positions, and author of “The Practice of Medicine.”

Added to our collection of medical student notebooks is the Clement C. Clay fonds. Clement Clay was a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and a graduate of McGill. During World War II, he served as a Lieutenant and later Commander in the medical corps of the United States Naval Reserve. In 1943 and 1944, he was sent by the Surgeon General to North Africa, Italy, and England on a special mission to study the handling of casualties and gather other information on military medical service in these countries. In 1944 he was able to study infection control measures during an outbreak of typhus in Naples.

And finally, we have a new collection of World War I letters in the Helen Drake fonds. She trained as a nurse at the Royal Victorian Hospital School of Nursing, graduating in 1907. The fonds contains many letters written while she was in Europe with the Canadian Army Medical Core from McGill during the war.

 

For more information, please feel free to contact the library at osler.library@mcgill.ca.

Missed our guide to using archives at the Osler Library? Have a look here.