John McCrae

Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae (1872 – 1918) was a Canadian doctor, teacher and poet who grew up in Ontario. ‘In Flanders Fields’ is his most famous poem and it is almost the last one that he wrote. He was involved in the Second Battle of Ypres, during which one of his close friends was killed. The poem was inspired by noticing poppies blooming on the makeshift graves the day after his friend was buried.