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“Let’s think critically about war, while respecting the veterans who lost their lives, and let’s use this opportunity of remembering to figure out how we can end war.”

While the history of the red poppy can be traced back to the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century, it was first adopted as a symbol of remembrance in Canada in 1921, six years after Lt.-Col. John McCrae of Guelph, Ont., wrote about the blood-red flowers that grew over battlefields in his poem, “In Flanders Fields.”

The white poppy emerged as a symbol of peace in 1933, when the Women’s Co-operative Guild in Britain was searching for a way to show their members were against war and for non-violence.

In Canada, the legion’s enmity for the white poppy has been partially fuelled by the misconception that peace activists believe the red poppy represents a glorification of war, Menzies says.

“All of the people I know who wear the white poppy are extremely respectful of the message of the red poppy, which is an honouring of the people who sacrificed their lives in war so that there could be peace and freedom for other people,” she says.

However, the London-based pacifist group that leads the white poppy campaign in Britain, the Peace Pledge Union, takes a more confrontational approach. The group’s website says the white poppy is a symbol of peace and remembrance for all victims of war, but it also says it is aimed at challenging “attempts to glamorize or celebrate war.”

Marian White, a volunteer with the Island Peace Committee in Charlottetown, says the red poppy is too closely associated with extolling the heroic virtues of the military — a position the legion has strenuously rejected.

“What we’ve been doing is quietly, each fall, reminding people that civilians are the majority of the victims of war these days, and that the red poppy campaign is something that we see as glamorizing or celebrating war,” White says. “It looks at the victims solely in the military … It’s heavily militaristic.”

The P.E.I. group handed out fewer than 100 white poppies last year.

Asked if the ongoing clash with the legion has hurt their campaign, White said: “I don’t think you can go wrong with promoting peace … It’s not meant to antagonize the vets.”