McCrae House

McCrae House is the birthplace and childhood home of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, the Canadian soldier, physician, and poet who wrote "In Flanders Fields" — one of the most famous poems in the English language. The house, a modest 1858 limestone cottage on Water Street near the Speed River, has been preserved and interpreted as a museum since 1966. The rooms are furnished to the period, and the interpretation focuses on both McCrae's life and on the broader experience of Canadians in the First World War.

The museum is small and easy to visit in under an hour, but it's thoughtfully done and the poetry connection gives it an emotional resonance beyond its modest scale. The garden contains a flanders poppy bed, and the house is particularly poignant to visit around Remembrance Day in November.

things to do museum sight
A story
John McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" in May 1915, sitting on the back of an ambulance near Ypres, shortly after conducting the burial service for a fellow officer who had been killed that morning. He apparently threw the poem away after writing it; it was retrieved by a colleague and submitted for publication. The poem became one of the most widely read of the First World War and was instrumental in establishing the poppy as the emblem of remembrance. McCrae himself died of pneumonia in January 1918, four months before the Armistice.