John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” is called the most popular poem of the First World War (1914-1918). Millions of people around the world recite or sing the lines every year during remembrance ceremonies. Many of us know “the poppy poem.” But who is John McCrae?

John McCrae was born on November 30, 1872, in a small stone house near the banks of the Speed River in Guelph, Ontario. His grandfather, Thomas McCrae, emigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1849. Thomas operated a local sawmill. Ten years later he owned the Guelph Woolen Mills. John’s father David worked in the woolen mills, but later became a farmer and prize-winning cattle breeder. In 1878 he married Janet Eckford, a minister’s daughter. The family grew to include three children: brothers Tom and John – called Jack – and sister Geills (jheels).

John enjoyed some of the activities other boys liked during the late 1800s – reading adventure stories in the popular The Boy’s Own Paper, making sketches, creating scrapbook pages, writing to pen pals. He spent time caring for and watching the antics of some of the animals at “Janefield”.

I’ve always loved history and writing non-fiction books lets me explore the past and become a time-traveller. I can move through hundreds of years, finding interesting places and people and the stories that I think will interest my readers of all ages.

Always a frequent letter writer, John told his family and friends about the battles at Ypres in the spring of 1915: We stayed 15 days and nights, and it was HELL all the time….We really expected to die in our tracks. We never had our boots off, much less our clothes.

The wounded needed to be treated whenever they arrived, as John wrote to a friend on New Years’ Eve day, 1916: Xmas Day we had 1300 patients in…. I have a hundred beds on my own hands as well as supervision: we had a good deal of illness.