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Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae, MD ( November 30 , 1872 – January 28 , 1918 ) was a Canadian Poet , Physician , Author , artist and soldier during World War I . He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem '' In Flanders Fields ''. McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario , attending the Guelph Collegiate And Vocational Institute . He then studied Medicine on a scholarship at the University Of Toronto .While attending U of T he joined the Zeta Psi Fraternity and became a great influence therein. While there he also rose to the command of the Toronto militia, the Queen's Own Rifles , and published his first Poems . He also co-authored a medical textbook, with J. G. Adami, titled ''A text-book of Pathology for Students of Medicine'' (Philadelphia and New York, 1912; 2nd ed., 1914). McCrae served in the Artillery during the Second Boer War , and upon his return was appointed professor of Pathology at the University Of Vermont , where he taught until 1911 (although he also taught at McGill University in Montreal ). In 1910 he accompanied Lord Grey , the Governor General Of Canada , on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay . When the British declared war on Germany at the start of World War I, Canada, as a member of the British Empire , also declared war. McCrae was appointed as a field surgeon in the Canadian artillery and was in charge of a field hospital during the Second Battle Of Ypres in 1915 . McCrae's friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle, and his burial inspired the poem, ''In Flanders Fields'', which was written on May 3 , 1915 and published later that year in ''Punch'' Magazine . In 1918 , while still serving in the field hospital, McCrae caught Pneumonia and Meningitis and died. McCrae was the uncle of Alberta MP David Kilgour and Kilgour's sister Geills Turner , the wife of former Canadian Prime Minister John Napier Turner . John McCrae Senior Public School, on McCowan Road in Scarborough, Ontario , is named in his honour. John Mcrae Secondary School, a school in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board , located in the Ottawa suburb of Barrhaven is named after him. {Link without Title} . EXTERNAL LINKS
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