This week celebrity dragon, Brett Wilson, got the online news world all excited by being critical of the white poppy movement. Actually, let me rephrase that, he got a bunch of followers excited by calling anyone who disagreed with him a moronic a**hole, and justified his 'argument' by saying that the white poppy is co-opting a symbol of remembrance for political purposes, and that we can support peace while still honouring veterans. Of course, if you look a little deeper, really Brett Wilson is just so addicted to attention that he was willing to use today as a way to draw attention to himself, but I'm not sure we should expect more from our culture of celebrity. I would like to thank him though, because before this week, I didn't know about the white poppy, and I did a little homework on it because I wanted to know what it actually meant.
The white poppy was created as a symbol back in the 1930's (thus is not a symbol co-opted by modern pacifists), by a women's co-op after WW I. Many of the women were war widows, or lost their sons in the first world war. Many of them were angry, because they were promised their loved ones were fighting a war to end all wars, and were left with broken homes and families. They saw the drive towards more war, and wanted to make a statement. The white poppy was born as a call to peace. Over the years the white poppy also evolved to be a symbol of the sacrifices civilians made, including those who lost their lives either in service to the wars, or as innocent casualties. The white poppy honours the women who sacrificed their health, and sometimes their lives, working in dangerous factories building munitions (read about the 'canary girls' if you want to know what it was like for these women). It honours the children who grew up in homes with no father, or with the fear and trauma that come from the mental and emotional toll the war took on the men who returned home. The white poppy honours the 1.5 million children killed in WWII. It honours the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killed in atomic bomb blasts, and those cursed to live with the aftermath of those attacks. The white poppy honours the scientists who gave their health and their lives developing them, sincerely believing they could save millions of lives in their actions, and then having to live with the consequences.
It's hard to find statistics on how many men and women were killed in the wars in non-military roles. The best I could dig up were that there were about 7 million civilians killed in world war I, and 55 million killed in world war II (that's actually double the number of military deaths). Equally disturbing, it is estimated that up to 12 million women were raped by soldiers during world war II, with as many as a million children being born as a result, the mothers being branded whores by the enemy, and often their own country as well.
This remembrance day, I was struck by a line in a video at a service I attended, where a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan proclaimed he was serving, so his children wouldn't have to. That's why the millions in world war I, and then II volunteered too. I pray that in another generation, I don't see a video of his son or daughter saying the same thing.
So make room for both poppies. The red remembers the veterans who served (that's the official meaning by the Canadian Legion), and the white remembers everyone else. Both are a call to end war, because that's really the only way we can fully honour the sacrifice of all the soldiers and civilians who fought, worked, suffered, and died for peace.
To quote the political and Christian rocker, Larry Norman:
"Do we really think the only way to bring about the peace is to sacrifice our children and kill all our enemies?"
I remember, and I believe in peace. Bring all the soldiers home... everywhere... forever.
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