Sir Andrew Macphail and Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields”

No reservation is necessary, by donation. Coffee & cookies and mingling at 2:30pm. At the Sir Andrew Macphail Homestead.

On November 11, 1918, the day an armistice finally silenced the guns of the First World War, Sir Andrew Macphail, proud son of Orwell, Prince Edward Island, finished a remarkable writing project. “John McCrae: An Essay in Character,” was a lengthy appreciation of the life and career of Sir Andrew’s close friend, Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, who had succumbed to illness and exhaustion in January of that momentous year. Summoning all of his considerable literary gifts, Macphail now celebrated McCrae’s character and many accomplishments, the most famous of which was a short poem, “In Flanders Fields”. When the book In Flanders Fields and Other Poems was published in 1919, it contained just over 40 pages of McRae’s verse: the bulk of the volume’s 141 pages were given over to Macphail’s essay.

Both Macphail and McCrae were accomplished writers, physicians, and soldiers, and each, in his own way, can now be regarded as an iconic figure in Canada’s First World War legacy. Just over one hundred years after Macphail wrote his “Essay in Character” on McCrae, the Macphail Homestead will host a talk by research librarian and archivist Simon Lloyd discussing the friendship of these two extraordinary men, and the various ways in which their brilliant careers intersected. This presentation will reprise and update well-received talks on this topic given by Simon in 2018 and 2019.

Biography:

Simon Lloyd received his BA in History and English from the University of Kings College, Halifax in 1994, and his Master of Library and Information Science degree from Dalhousie University in 1997. After working in several Halifax-area archives, he came to UPEI’s Robertson Library to take up the position of University Archivist and Special Collections Librarian in 1999. He has volunteered as Board Secretary and Heritage Committee Chair with the Sir Andrew Macphail Foundation since 2018.