John McCrae

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918) was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during the World War I and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem "In Flanders Fields". McCrae died of pneumonia near the end of the war. His famous poem is a threnody, a genre of lament. McCrae was born in McCrae House in Guelph, Ontario to Lieutenant-Colonel David McCrae and Janet Simpson Eckford; he was the grandson of Scottish immigrants from Balmaghie, Kirkcudbrightshire. His father had served with the Guelph Home Guard during the Fenian raids, and was a member of the Guelph city council and a director of The North American Life Assurance Company. His brother, Dr. Thomas McCrae, became a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore and close associate of Sir William Osler. His sister Geills married James Kilgour, a justice of the Court of King's Bench of Manitoba, and moved to Winnipeg.

McCrae attended the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute and graduated from the Institute at 16. He was the first Guelph student to win a scholarship to the University of Toronto. After attending university for three years, however, he was forced to take a year off due to severe asthma. This illness recurred throughout his life.

Among his papers in the John McCrae House in Guelph is a letter he wrote on July 18, 1893, to Laura Kains while he trained as an artilleryman at Tête-de-Pont barracks, today's Fort Frontenac, in Kingston, Ontario. "I have a manservant ... Quite a nobby place it is, in fact ... My windows look right out across the bay, and are just near the water's edge; there is a good deal of shipping at present in the port; and the river looks very pretty."

He was a resident master in English and Mathematics in 1894 at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. McCrae returned to the University of Toronto and completed his B.A., then returned again to study medicine on a scholarship.

At medical school, McCrae had tutored other students to help pay his tuition. Two of his students were among the first female doctors in Ontario.

McCrae graduated in 1898. He was first a resident house-officer at Toronto General Hospital, then in 1899 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 1901, he was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Vermont, where he taught until 1911; he also taught at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. In 1902, he was appointed resident pathologist at Montreal General Hospital and later became assistant pathologist to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. In 1904, he was appointed an associate in medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Later that year, he went to England where he studied for several months and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians.

In 1905, McCrae set up his own practice although he continued to work and lecture at several hospitals. The same year, he was appointed pathologist to the Montreal Foundling and Baby Hospital. In 1908, he was appointed physician to the Alexandra Hospital for Contagious Diseases.

In 1910, he accompanied Lord Grey, the Governor General of Canada, on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay to serve as expedition physician. Lord Grey marvelled that "You were able to beat the record of the Arabian Nights, for I believe the 3000 miles of our travels were illumined by as many stories."

McCrae was the co-author, with J. G. Adami, of a medical textbook, A Text-Book of Pathology for College Students of Medicine (1912; 2nd ed., 1914).

McCrae was the founding member of the University Club of Montreal.

McCrae proposed to his sister-in-law Nona Gwyn but was refused. Apart from weekly letters to his mother the poet was very private about any romantic relationships, and "from time to time" his sexuality has been questioned. However, according to McCrae biographer John F. Prescott and McCrae House curator Bev Dietrich, there is no evidence that McCrae was gay.