CANADIAN
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John McCRAE. Born Guelph, Ontario,
1872.
Commanded an artillery battery during the Boer War. Served as
Brigade Surgeon, First Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery from Fall
1914 to Summer 1915. Served in 2nd Battle of Ypres as surgeon and
occasional gunner.
In Summer 1915 became second in command of medical services at
Number 3 Canadian General Hospital in France. Died 28 January 1918
of pneumonia and meningitis. Buried at Wimereux Cemetery in France.
Wrote most famous poem of the war, "In Flanders Fields".
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
 That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
 
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Robert William SERVICE, 1874-1958.
Born in Preston, Lancashire. Service emigrated to Canada in 1894 and, while working for the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Victoria, B.C., was stationed for eight years in the Yukon. Service's first verse collections, “Songs of a Sourdough” (1907) and “Ballads of a Cheechako” (1909), describing life in the Canadian north, was enormously popular. He worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 At the outbreak of WWI, Service tried to enlist, lying about his age (41), but was rejected because of a varicose vein. He later joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps and served as a driver on the Western Front for two years. His “Rhymes of a Red Cross Man” appeared in 1916.
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2nd Lieutenant
Bernard Freeman TROTTER. 
Born 16 June 1890, Toronto, Canada. Educated Woodstock College, Ontario, and
McMaster University. While at University of Toronto reading English
Literature in late 1915, applied for commission in British Army. Sailed
for England March 1916.
Trained at Oxford; commissioned in the Leicestershire Regiment,
the county, as it happened, where his father was born and where members
of his family still lived. Joined 11th Batallion Leicestershire
Regiment at Bethune in December 1916.
In April the Battalion was in the
front line in the Mazzingarbe area, west of Loos. On 7 May 1917, while
on his horse supervising the transporting of slag for repairing roads
at Loos. 2nd Lieutenant Trotter was killed by an explosive shell.
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A CANADIAN TWILIGHT AND OTHER POEMS OF WAR AND OF PEACE.
Toronto, 1917.
Inscription reads: To my absent boy, Lt. Carl H. Hubner with hopes that he may enjoy his late lamented friend's writings as much as has been my pleasure. ~~ Dad. ~~ Dec. 25th, 1917
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