The cannons of World War I were barely silenced when Canadians began looking for ways to honour their war dead. One of the most touching commemorative efforts is also among the least conspicuous. The Memorial Chamber of Books of Remembrance are in the Center Block in the Peace Tower of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. They name 116,031 Canadians who died while serving in military campaigns outside Canada.
The chamber was opened by Prince Edward, then Prince of Wales, on Aug. 3, 1927. It occupies the second level of the Peace Tower and attracts more than 500,000 visitors annually.
The Books of Remembrance, now one each for World War I, World War II, Merchant Navy, Korean War, Boer War, the Nile expedition, and the Province of Newfoundland, rest on six altars.
The poppies sold for Remembrance day recall the poppy fields of Flanders, a historic region now in parts of Belgium, France and The Netherlands. They are eulogized in Canadian physician John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Field," which begins, "In Flanders field the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row."
