Do you know the foe? Lest you have forgotten, here’s a reminder.
Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae’s lament poses a question some have stopped pondering. That’s a big problem - but there’s hope.
Recently, one of my younger colleagues, Damien Kuriek, stood in the House of Commons to deliver a tribute to his father, who had passed away unexpectedly. He closed with a call to action: "My hope is that everyone can remember my dad, Jay, by living with the strength, generosity, and faith he showed us." In response, in a rare show of unity, all Members of the House gave him a standing ovation.
Damien's hope and the reaction it evoked among divided people exemplify a phenomenon I have often seen in moments of grief. Eulogies of remarkable people are never mere lists of accomplishments. Instead, they challenge us to ensure that their work to improve the human condition endures beyond their lives, uniting us to carry their mission forward.
More than a century ago, Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae wrote one of the bluntest—and most enduring—calls to action ever contained in a remembrance. In 1915, his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, fell in combat during the Second Battles of Ypres. After after Lieutenant Helmer's funeral, and noticing the poppies springing up among the graves of the fallen, McCrae wrote an elegy entitled 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
In his poem, McCrae, who later died in the war, left a solemn charge to future generations. You will face the same foe we did. And you must engage with it, lest everything we - the war dead - have sacrificed for you be in vain. If you succeed, there shall still be beauty and we shall rest easy. But if you fail, there will be no rest for any of us in this life or the next.
But if McCrae's mandate to us was clear, the enemy he called us to face was left undefined. One could interpret it as a call to defeat enemy soldiers, but this view seems overly narrow. McCrae's words transcend literal war; they speak to a more insidious, pervasive threat.
In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned that Canadians spend too little time reflecting on McCrae's lament's true meaning, even on Remembrance Day. With division and unrest spreading through our communities, schools, and places of worship, I fear that many have grown complacent or naïve about the foe McCrae identified.
Years of peace and prosperity have lulled Canadians into thinking that the foe can neither take root here nor harm us. Some even see the foe as a friend, believing it worthy of protection rather than something to root out. But these are lies we are duty-bound to reject if we are to complete McCrae’s task.
However, what exactly is the enemy McCrae asked us to confront?
Through my time in public service, I have seen firsthand the worst of that which humanity can inflict upon itself. I've walked through homes reduced to blackened rubble, where the fresh stench of death and blood spatter was all that was left of the families that once inhabited them. I’ve walked over mass graves. I've met survivors of genocide and sexual slavery and listened as world leaders attempted to diminish the crimes committed against them. I've witnessed mothers whose starving children limply clung to them in refugee camps, displaced by warfare and disease.
And I know those who serve in our military have seen far worse than I.
So I know our foe is real, pervasive, and intent on our destruction. But I also know that the horrors of war, though perhaps its most visible manifestation, do not constitute the foe itself.
But if it's not war, then what is it?
I believe the foe germinates in complacency and in the false belief that Canada is immune to external threats. It spreads by erasing the hard-learned lessons of past conflicts and convincing us that others will defend our freedom, rendering us unprepared and unwilling to defend it ourselves. It fosters divisiveness and denies the existence of a Canadian identity. But this assumption—that the foe can be ignored or that Canada lacks something worth defending—is fatally flawed.
In that place of folly - ingratitude, decadence, arrogance and naïveté - we meet McCrae's foe: the desire to subjugate others and strip away their freedoms.
It terrifies me that the foe so obviously lives on in Canada despite McCrae's cautionary words, and the sacrifices made by so many who have fought to defend our nation in armed combat.
That's because the foe, left unchecked, inevitably leads to the downfall of a free people. If we are to truly honour those who have fallen in defence of our nation, we must accept that opposing the foe is a battle that each of us is currently engaged in. We must view Remembrance as a lifelong charge, a sacred duty to prevent the foe from eroding Canadian freedoms, democratic institutions, and our national unity.
Like mould spores, the foe lives on every surface of human nature, constantly probing for new hosts to infect. It seeks to divide us and strip us of our birthrights—freedom of speech, the choice of our own path, the right to worship without persecution, and the ability to love without consequence. And it attempts to deceive us, suggesting that to preserve these freedoms, we must abandon our most fundamental responsibility: to do no harm to another.
We must be vigilant on these matters: the foe cannot be appeased and will not de-escalate. Thus, we must resist the foe within our minds, in our relationships, in our workplaces, and in civil society. This is a challenging task. The foe often disguises itself as a virtuous ideology that is wrong to challenge, masking its true intentions. It often attempts to convince us that the only way to protect our freedom is to take away, or limit, the freedom of others.
Yet, hope lies in Canada's history.
When McCrae penned In Flanders Fields, Canadian soldiers were fighting for one of the first times as a unified force. During the First Great War, soldiers of diverse backgrounds - including over 4,000 Indigenous people - fought side by side under the Canadian banner, for the goodness our nation represents. In that War and the others that followed, men and women of all faiths fought alongside one another to liberate others from the foe. This unity—the miracle of people setting aside differences to protect the freedom found in our nation—is the foe's greatest fear. That miracle, thankfully, remains alive and well today.
So this Remembrance Day, let us thank those who have fought for Canada and renew our commitment to confront the foe ourselves.
But how do we quarrel with the foe? What must we do to hold it at bay?
The foe responds to hard power, making it essential for our nation to be capable of self-defence and for military service to be respected. Yet civilians, too, must bear the responsibility of keeping the foe in check.
We know the foe is deathly allergic to freedom and equality of opportunity, so we can starve it of the fuel it needs. The foe's oxygen is religious hatred, rigid caste structures, petty jealousies, intellectual laziness, selfishness, political cowardice, and autocracy. The foe cannot thrive in a nation in which anyone, of any background, of any belief, of any origin, can live without fear of persecution and prosper by the work of their hand. Canada - and other countries committed to traditions of freedom, democracy, justice and the rule of law - are humanity's best defence against the foe. It is only within nations where institutions exist that allow us to solve society-scale grievances through words and democratic action instead of with violence that humanity has been able to hold the foe at bay for any length of time.
And we must remember that the foe confronts us every day, in small moments: when we choose to empathize rather than judge, when we bear witness to suffering rather than ignore it, when we temper anger with understanding, and when we work to correct injustices.
Fighting the foe means shedding ideologies that undermine our freedoms. It means thinking critically, challenging the status quo, and forgiving when we can. A shared commitment to freedom and decency can transcend many divides—a reminder that the foe seeks to silence us but that we must protect open dialogue as a safeguard of our democracy.
But perhaps the most potent weapon against the foe is our pride in Canada. Canada is the embodiment of freedom from the foe, a shining example of peaceful, democratic pluralism. We weaken the foe each time we feel pride for our country singing in our blood. Every time we sing the national anthem, wave our flag, wear the poppy, or thank a veteran, we also strike a blow against it.
And proud of our nation we should be. Canada offers a promise of freedom and prosperity that tens of millions of people from around the world have migrated to experience. It is the promise Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae fought and died for, the promise he threw the torch to us to protect.
Today, the foe seeks to extinguish this pride and make us feel ashamed of the goodness that can be found in our shared Canadian traditions. The foe understands that we won't fight to protect something if we don't value it. That's why it tempts us to cancel Canada Day celebrations and seeks to normalize shouts of "death to Canada" and burning Canadian flags in our streets. It's why it wants us to view the Canadian military uniform as a symbol of oppression instead of the proud armor of liberators that it always has been. That's why it seeks to have us erase our nation's history instead of celebrating the good while fixing the bad.
It gives me hope that many Canadians of differing political viewpoints, religions, and ethnic backgrounds are coming together to reject these lies and defend the institutions that protect our national identity of freedom.
And a people united in freedom - as we can be here, in this country- is the foe's undoing.
When we stand together as Canadians united with love for our nation, our freedoms, and for one another, we, the true North, strong and free, truly honour those who have fought and died to protect Canada's promise.
When we do this, we defeat the foe.
And so to Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae and all who have served our nation across time, thank you for all that you have done, and hear our promise today. We Remember, we will take up the quarrel with the foe, and we will prevail.
God keep our land glorious and free. O Canada, now and always, we stand together, proudly on guard for thee.
Lest we forget.
[If these words resonate with you, please share them in honour of those who serve, and have served in the Canadian Armed Forces, especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our freedoms.]