by Chris Bisson

“White poppies? That is so disrespectful of the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives for our ‘freedom.’” Anyone who has worn a white poppy in November will likely have encountered this accusation.

It is amazing the sort of animosity that you experience when you wear a white flower on Remembrance Day. Such all-too-common outbursts make it especially difficult to endure because this is probably one of the most confusing times of the year or me. It should be simple, really–or so the narrative goes: slip a loonie into the box, grab a red poppy, and remember the bloody deaths of the men and women killed in past military conflicts.

I am a military brat, the child of a member of the Canadian Forces. Regardless of my politics, my military upbringing is simply a reality for me. Being raised as a military brat is actually more politically nuanced than most people think regarding the subject of war and military sacrifice, at least in my experience. I grew up with the ritualized national sermon on national sacrifice, except that I always received a large dose of “never again.”

“Never again” was the moral conclusion of every Remembrance Day ceremony. “These men and women died so that we will never have to see war again.” With strong resolve and many tears, I would honour the soldiers’ deaths by pledging my opposition to war. This, to me, was what Remembrance Day was all about: a plea for peace out of respect for the dead.

I think back to the long-passionate discussions with my father over beers when we would argue about the merits of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. While we often disagreed on the facts and assumptions on the nature or worth of the conflict, discussion heatedly and painfully always came back to one point of agreement: war is something that needs to end.

This is not a unique position among soldiers. Most of the Canadian Forces people I grew up around would likewise agree with that pacifist sentiment.

The idea of my father going to war constantly lingered in my mind with fear. In the media, military families are always portrayed as brimming with pride and unconditional support for their nation and military as they march off to war. No one, regardless of their politics, wants to see their loved ones go to war. When I was growing up, Remembrance Day was the calm reassurance that my dad would not have to die in combat because Canada is thankfully only a peacekeeping country–problematic as that rhetoric already is.

I was living on a NATO base in Europe when 9/11 happened. Americans primarily occupied the base, and when the attack happened, the tone of the entire community changed. The “never again” rhetoric I grew up with was thrown right out the window. At the youth drop-in centre on base, I vividly remembered the first time I realized I was politically anti-war. Before this, I had simply assumed that it was universal logic that no one would ever promote or argue in favour of war. But I was faced with a room full of other military children who were willing to accept their mothers and fathers going off to war, and possibly die in order to avenge the attack in New York. Whatever comfort I had in the prospect of my father never having to go into combat came to an end. And at this point, on a very visceral level, I found myself not trying to argue against war simply because it was morally reprehensible, but in order to protect my family. I did not know what the future for Canadian Forces members was going to be at the time.

Far from feeling honour and pride in my military upbringing, I felt lied to in terms of “never again.” This is when Remembrance Day became complicated to me.

Before that moment, Remembrance Day was the solemn recognition that we had learned our lesson, and that war was some barbaric thing of the past. After the flip in military culture that took place with 9/11, Remembrance Day became far more conciliatory of sacrifices yet to come. It became a nation-wide display of ironic tragedy.

This is why I wear a white poppy. I wear it to get back to the feeling of comfort and safety that I had when war seemed like a thing of the past. When the red poppy was a mourning of mistakes, not the apology for ongoing tragedy. The day is supposed to mark the armistice of World War I, when everyone decided that war should never happen again under any circumstance.  And just like my boyhood naiveté, Europe was betrayed by that armistice again. To truly remember the death in war is to imagine what it would be like to lose loved ones, and that under no circumstance should anyone ever have to endure such terror.

This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 6, No. 3 (Nov/Dec 2013).

Read the original article at The Leveller