In
Canada, people wear pins shaped like red poppy flowers on
Remembrance Day (
Armistice Day) and the days leading up to it (usually from just after
Hallowe'en, so from November 1st to 11th) in remembrance of Canadian soldiers and of the devasting effects of
war in general.
The Royal Canadian
Legion and their Poppy Fund distribute the vast majority of the poppy pins and collect donations - their pins are made of plastic and have a small black eight-sided plastic centre on top of a moulded red plastic four-petaled flower, with a bent pin that hold them together and pins through your shirt. Schoolchildren delight in disassembling them and reversing them, and on November 12th, thousands of these poppies can be found lying scattered around everywhere - they have no clasp, and they get caught on things easily, so they're easy to misplace. I tend to go through at least two each year.
Iain tells me that the British Legion does much the same in Britain.
Some people make their own pins, out of creativity or protest or a desire not to contribute to the vast piles of non-
biodegradable plastic littering the street. Churchill Secondary School in
Vancouver, for instance, has in the past made their own as an alternative to the Legion's poppies, in protest of the Legion's policy of not allowing
turbans as part of their uniforms for those whose
religion requires it.
The poppies refer to the traditional image of poppies growing over soldier's
graveyards, as eloquently described in
John McCrae's deathless poem
In Flanders Fields, which most canadian schoolchildren must memorize at some point in their life.
Poppy is also the title of a children's book by Avi about Poppy, a mouse who defies a tyrannical owl, her father, and her bullying boyfriend to discover her own courage and safety and freedom for her family. It's the first of a series about her and her friends.