A few years ago, I went on record as saying that I rarely to never wore a poppy on Remembrance Day (a personal belief I admitted was the scariest thing I’d ever talked about on my blog because the poppy is so sacrosanct in our culture.)
I observed that I tend to avoid the poppy for a few different reasons – my belief that there are too many causes deserving support and if you support one, you should support them all, my personal feelings towards war (and its glorification in any form – anyone else notice that the day has shifted from “Never Again” to “Hey, them boys in Afghanistan are defending our FREEDUM!”) and lastly, my resistance to anything that smacks of mass conformity of any kind. (Er, Go Riders Go this weekend!)
I may have been ahead of the curve. This year I’ve noticed a real trend in the number of articles about people resisting the politics of the poppy for all manner of reasons – both the ones I mentioned above and more.
Even something that appears so clear cut is rarely black and white. I’ll leave with the status update a friend posted on Facebook on Remembrance Day:
“Mixed feelings about Remembrance Day. The Japanese side of my family was put in an internment camp during WWII. My Grandfather on the white side served in the military. I feel so lucky to be Canadian and to have all the freedoms that I do. I also have complicated feelings about Canadian peacekeeping, and peacemaking. It’s not black and white.”
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