Field Trip: McCrae House

With my Sweetheart away this week, and needing to go to Guelph the other day to sell some rabbits, my son and I thought we would make a day of it and see some of the Guelph sites. We chose McCrae House and the river that ran nearby it.

www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields-inspiration.htmJohn McCrae was a Guelph Resident and he was responsible for writing a poem that many people are very familiar with.   He was a young artillery officer and military doctor and one of the young men under his command died in the Battle of Ypres. 

Depending on who you believe, this young man's death was the inspiration for the poem, or it could have been the poppies growing, or it could have just been boredom speaking.  :)   Either way, his poem lives on.

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.

---

The house was beautiful and the grounds were so well kept.  It was too bad it was so hot out, it would have been lovely to sit out there for a while and watch my lad look for spiders among the hedges.

Inside the museum we came upon this lovely map.   It was SO pretty.. I'm not sure that's the right word for it.  But it caught our eyes and we stood in front of it for quite a while looking it over really well. 

"Mom, why does it have all these place names?" 
"Why doesn't it look like our map at home?"
"Is it a real map or a fake one?".. he then started checking it over, my attention-to-detail lad, and noticed that the creases in the map weren't real creases and realized it was a replica.

Then he noticed all these wavy lines...MOM!   What are these for?  He read the names and remembered that oceans have currents, so we traced them out, finding out how they bend and swirl around the continents, and they pass over each other (or so it seems) and it was just fascinating to watch him and to see how the currents move all around the world.

John McCrae was part of the army, so we learned what the mess kit looked like.

We discovered and talked about how a man can have a close relationship with his horse and dog..."but mom, he really needed to have a cat!"

It was not a big museum and once we got past the map, we saw everything they had rather quickly.  There were other things to see, but these were the highlights for us.  If you ever have a chance to visit Guelph, take a peek inside!   On a nice day, bring a picnic lunch and enjoy the serene grounds.   $5 per person to get in, open Tues-Sun.

When we were done, we headed across the street to sit in the shade of some trees by the river.  The lad chased a young robin, and was stunned by the sight of a tree growing through a cement block.   He noted how it bent out the concrete.  It seemed a strong vigorous tree.  The goslings we saw were farther along then ours at home.

It was very restful sitting here, watching the water, listening to the sounds of people in the distance, "mom, would be even better if there was a big row of trees over there, then we wouldn't see the buildings, it would be even nicer then".   And it would have been, but it was still nice.

We then headed off to the Civic Museum, which I will post about another time.  :)