Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918) was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem "In Flanders Fields". McCrae died of pneumonia near the end of the war. His famous poem is a threnody, a genre of lament.
McCrae was born in McCrae House in Guelph, Ontario to Lieutenant-Colonel David McCrae and Janet Simpson Eckford; he was the grandson of Scottish immigrants from Balmaghie, Kirkcudbrightshire. His father had served with the Guelph Home Guard during the Fenian raids, and was a member of the Guelph city council and a director of The North American Life Assurance Company. His brother, Dr. Thomas McCrae, became a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore and close associate of Sir William Osler. His sister Geills married James Kilgour, a justice of the Court of King's Bench of Manitoba, and moved to Winnipeg.
McCrae attended the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute and graduated from the Institute at 16. He was the first Guelph student to win a scholarship to the University of Toronto. After attending university for three years, however, he was forced to take a year off due to severe asthma. This illness recurred throughout his life.
Among his papers in the John McCrae House in Guelph is a letter he wrote on July 18, 1893, to Laura Kains while he trained as an artilleryman at Tête-de-Pont barracks, today's Fort Frontenac, in Kingston, Ontario. "I have a manservant ... Quite a nobby place it is, in fact ... My windows look right out across the bay, and are just near the water's edge; there is a good deal of shipping at present in the port; and the river looks very pretty."
He was a resident master in English and Mathematics in 1894 at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. McCrae returned to University College at the University of Toronto and completed his B.A., then returned again to study medicine at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine on a scholarship.
At medical school, McCrae had tutored other students to help pay his tuition. Two of his students were among the first female doctors in Ontario.
McCrae graduated in 1898. He was first a resident house-officer at Toronto General Hospital, then in 1899 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 1901, he was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Vermont, where he taught until 1911; he also taught at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. In 1902, he was appointed resident pathologist at Montreal General Hospital and later became assistant pathologist to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. In 1904, he was appointed an associate in medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Later that year, he went to England where he studied for several months and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians.
In 1905, McCrae set up his own practice although he continued to work and lecture at several hospitals. The same year, he was appointed pathologist to the Montreal Foundling and Baby Hospital. In 1908, he was appointed physician to the Alexandra Hospital for Contagious Diseases.
In 1910, he accompanied Lord Grey, the Governor General of Canada, on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay to serve as expedition physician. Lord Grey marvelled that "You were able to beat the record of the Arabian Nights, for I believe the 3000 miles of our travels were illumined by as many stories."
McCrae was the co-author, with J. G. Adami, of a medical textbook, A Text-Book of Pathology for College Students of Medicine (1912; 2nd ed., 1914).
McCrae was the founding member of the University Club of Montreal.
McCrae proposed to his sister-in-law Nona Gwyn but was refused. Apart from weekly letters to his mother the poet was very private about any romantic relationships. In 2011, McCrae's sexuality was questioned by staff of the Bytown Museum, causing some controversy. The Museum’s director of development later referred questions about the theory to Ottawa historian Glenn Wright, who denied involvement and said the idea had been presented to him by a museum curator. According to McCrae biographer John F. Prescott and McCrae House curator Bev Dietrich, there is no evidence that McCrae was gay.
McCrae's father, Lt-Col. David McCrae, a Fenian Raid veteran, organized and commanded the Guelph Field Artillery from the 1870s-1890s, and in 1887, John McCrae joined his father's unit as a Bugler and then as a Gunner. He had previously joined the Guelph Highland Cadet Corps in 1886 at age 14, being awarded a prize as the best cadet in Ontario in 1887.
McCrae continued to serve in the militia in the 1890s, being appointed Quarter-Master Sergeant of the Guelph Artillery in 1891, and then Lieutenant in 1896.
In December 1899, McCrae volunteered for active service in South Africa as a Lieutenant in 'D' Battery, Canadian Field Artillery during the Second Boer War. McCrae was placed in charge of No. 2 (right) section, 'D' Battery, while his friend Edward Morrison commanded No. 1 Section. They arrived in Cape Town in February 1900, and fought in skirmishes in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, including the Carnarvon Expedition and at the Battle of Belfast in August 1900. McCrae returned home in late 1900. For his service in the war, he was awarded the Queen's South Africa Medal with three clasps.
In 1901, he was promoted to Captain in the 16th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, and then to Major of the 1st Artillery Brigade in 1902. In 1904 he resigned his active militia position and was placed on the reserve of officers as a Major.
When Britain declared war on Germany because of the latter's invasion of neutral Belgium at the beginning of the First World War (1914), Canada, as a Dominion within the British Empire, was at war as well. McCrae volunteered for service at age 41. He wrote a friend, "I am really rather afraid, but more afraid to stay at home with my conscience." He was appointed as Medical Officer and Major of the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. He treated the wounded during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, from a hastily dug 8-by-8-foot (2.4 m × 2.4 m) bunker in the back of the dyke along the Yser Canal about 2 miles north of Ypres. McCrae's friend and former militia member, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle, and his burial inspired the poem, "In Flanders Fields", which was written on May 3, 1915.