“Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders” (1921), by Mary Riter Hamilton. Source: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-142
This past Remembrance Day, historian Ian McKay gave a lecture titled “What’s Wrong With Flanders Fields.”
He argues that Remembrance Day in general and the poem in particular have been conscripted as part of what he calls the “right-wing militarization of Canadian society.”
McKay delivered the talk to the Queen’s University Institute for Lifelong Learning on November 11, 2012.
You can listen to a podcast of the talk here.
McKay is a professor of history at Queen’s University. He recently published Warrior Nation? Rebranding Canada in a Fearful Age (Between the Lines, 2012), co-authored with Jamie Swift.
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