November 16, 2020

YES WE FORGET: CHRISTMAS COMMERCE TRUMPS PANDEMIC, POPPIES

GRAVENHURST — What a difference a few days makes.

And not just in weather.

Wednesday, Remembrance Day, the parade square around at the local cenotaph was virtually void — save for 14 legionnaires bravely cloistered inside, lest anyone forget.

By order of the legion command — on the recommendation of public health officials.

A war being waged on a killer coronavirus.

But three days later — 72 hours — the same reverential space was teeming with pop-up tents as Christmas shoppers took advantage of sunny skies and warm temperatures lured by the titillating urge to splurge at a fall Farmer’s Market.

Vendors hocked wares at the foot of cenotaph, where poppies lay next to overshadowed wreaths beneath the names of the fallen of wars.

Merchants unaware of the pandemic possibilities.

Customers masked in indifference.

Business as usual in Ontario.

Reminds one of this bastardization of “The world’s most famous war memorial poem.”

In Flanders Fields by Lt. Col. John McCrae, Canada, composed at the battlefront on May 3, 1915 during the second battle of Ypres, Belgium.

And with advance apologies for attached addendums.

In Flanders fields — and on cenotaphs the poppies blow

Between the crosses, that mark our place:

Row on row tents pop up.

And in the sky the larks still bravely sing and fly.

Scarce heard by the shoppers below

Are the cries of the soldiers too soon forgotten.

We are the dead: Short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Were remembered

Loved and were loved: and now we lie

Comrades buried beneath Christmas commerce

In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the consumer foe

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high

without falling victim to tinsel times

If ye break faith with us who die,

we shall not sleep, though poppies grow

in Flanders fields

And the bloody business of war

succumbs to keep businesses

from going in the red

Is this what we fought for?

Merry Christmas!