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Poppy (Papaver): Each year, the symbolic red poppy connects Canadians to Remembrance Day on November
11. At 11:00 am, they reflect upon and observe a minute's silence in memory of the brave people who lost their
lives during the two world wars. Major John McCrae, a First Brigade Surgeon with the Canadian field Artillery
and born in Guelph Ontario, was a World War One victim. He wrote the poem "In Flanders fields, the poppies
blow between the crosses row on row" in 1915 during the second battle of Ypres in Belgium. The vast fields
of wild poppies on the battlegrounds of Flanders were the inspiration for McCrae's poem. Although there are several
red poppy species, it is said that the Flander's fields poppies were those with a central distinct black cross.
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