Remembrance Day: From 1918 to 2025
On November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m., The Great War finally came to an end. Although the armistice was technically only agreed upon hours earlier, at 5 a.m., the date and time have stuck with us through time. Today, 107 years later, this day is an occasion to commemorate all of the soldiers who have fought and died while in service.
The first Remembrance Day, also called ‘Armistice Day’, took place in November 1919. On the 6th, a message written by King George V, addressed to ‘all people of the empire’, was read to the Canadian people by our prime minister at the time, Sir George Foster. In it, he spoke of the desire and importance to commemorate those who had lost their lives to achieve ‘that great deliverance’. To do so, he asked for all to, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, take a two minute pause of all activities, so that we may take the time to pay tribute to ‘the glorious dead’. For the following years, Remembrance Day took place on the Monday in the week of the 11th.
In Canada, the day didn’t have much importance to the average citizen. It fell for many years on the same date as Thanksgiving, which made it so that only those with a proximity to the tragedies of The Great War, veterans and their families, actually recognized it through gatherings in church or local memorials. In 1928, citizens, many of them being veterans, pushed to have the holiday moved so that we may not forget the significance of the event. This was accomplished in 1931, when the federal government declared for an official Armistice Day on the 11th of November and moved Thanksgiving to a different date. At this point, Remembrance Day took on the shape of the holiday as we know it today, the objective was and is to remember individual soldiers instead of the politics that led to both the start and end of the war.
Nowadays, the holiday is acknowledged by many nations of the commonwealth, including the UK, Australia, and, of course, Canada. For Canada, we remember the more than 2,300,000 Canadian soldiers who have fought, including the 118,000 who have tragically lost their lives.
What does Remembrance Day look like today?
As mentioned previously, Remembrance Day is celebrated all across the world. In Canada, it is recognized as a statutory holiday in three territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut) as well as in six provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador). Each year, the National War Memorial in Ottawa holds the national ceremony, where The Governor General presides over the ceremony. In Montreal, a local ceremony will take place on the day starting at 10:30 a.m. at Place du Canada. The event will last until 11:30 a.m., and you can expect the customary two minutes of silence to happen at 11:00 a.m..
Why the Poppy?
We owe the symbol of the poppy to John McCrae a poet and doctor who volunteered to join the front as a military surgeon in 1914, at the age of 41. In 1915, he was stationed in Belgium where he lived through the Second Battle of Ypres, which is now recognized as the first large-scale poison gas attack in modern history. McCrae was deeply shaken by the experience. He himself sustained lung damage which aggravated his pre-existent asthma.
Tragically, this injury was nothing compared to the tremendous loss he suffered in the battle. During the six weeks that were marked by this battle, stretching from April 22nd to May 25th, 6 500 Canadians lost their lives. Among those soldiers was Alexis Helmer, a 22-year-old man that McCrae had grown to call a friend through their common service. McCrae conducted the burial service himself, given that the brigade chaplain was absent at the time. Later, while visiting Helmer’s grave, McCrae started to write In Flanders Fields, the 15 line poem that cemented the poppy as the official symbol of Remembrance Day.
Poppies covered the battle fields along the Western Front, the four-hundred-mile line of fortifications that stretched from Belgium to Switzerland. They overgrew the mass graves of soldiers from both sides of the conflict. Even as heavy artillery decimated the land, the bright red flowers strived. It isn’t surprising that this wildflower became such a powerful symbol.
But isn’t it ironic how such a large-scale destruction could lead to a field of gorgeous flora? That the blood shed of men who lost their lives for this conflict left behind a sign of their involvement, a chilling yet beautiful reminder of what war has taken from us. Those soldiers loved, were loved, and now they lie under a sea of strikingly bright flowers.
It was in 1921 that the Great War Veterans’ Association, a Canadian group, adopted it as a symbol of Remembrance. Now, the vestige of McCrae’s poem, worn on your left side, close to your heart, has become the common emblem to commemorate veterans.
‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.’
– John McCrae, 1915
To conclude, our history isn’t going anywhere. If we do not stay conscious of our people’s past, even the sadder parts, we will forget ourselves and the real individuals that have died protecting our democracy. We must remember the tragedies that have shaped our history as well as the persons whose sacrifice shaped those tragedies. We must remember why European soil was covered in poppies. For all of those reasons, we must remember November 11th, 1918.
The Insider would like to thank past and current individuals who served in the Canadian Army. Thank you for your service and have a good Remembrance Day.
References
Remembrance Day | 2. History of Remembrance Day.” Canada.ca, 8 November 2022, https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/military-history/history-heritage/remembrance-ceremony/2.html. Accessed 5 November 2025.
“Remembrance – Remembrance Day | Canada and the First World War.” Canadian War Museum, https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/after-the-war/remembrance/remembrance-day/. Accessed 5 November 2025
“Remembrance – The Poppy | Canada and the First World War.” Canadian War Museum, https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/after-the-war/remembrance/the-poppy/. Accessed 6 November 2025.
Granfield, Linda, et al. “John McCrae | l’Encyclopédie Canadienne.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 15 March 2016, https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/fr/article/john-mccrae-1. Accessed 6 November 2025.
McCrae, John. “In Flanders Fields | The Poetry Foundation.” Poetry Foundation, 6 November 2018, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47380/in-flanders-fields. Accessed 8 November 2025.
“Find a Ceremony.” The Royal Canadian Legion, https://www.legion.ca/remembrance/remembrance-day/remembrance-day-ceremonies. Accessed 8 November 2025.
“10 Quick Facts on… Remembrance Day.” Government of Canada. 2 February 2019, https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/information-for/educators/quick-facts/remembrance-day. Accessed 8 November 2025.
John McCrae. (1914). Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_McCrae_in_uniform_circa_1914
