Vancouver Sun: In Flanders Fields still Canada’s pre-eminent war poem
McCrae’s poem was a response to newly emerging questions about the meaning of war and the need to keep fighting, said Adam Muller, a professor at the University of Manitoba who researches how war is represented in art.
The same questions weren’t being asked of Canada’s fight in Afghanistan, which is why the artistic answers are different as well.
“These are peripheral representations; they don’t strike at the core of our day-to-day life in the way that something like ‘Flanders Fields’ did,” he said.
“And I think also there’s prevailing ambivalence about Canadian involvement in that war … we find evidence of this ambivalence in the art that has been produced to date as well. It’s not clear cut. Say what you like about McCrae, he’s clear cut. “