Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, Armistice Day

In 1931, Parliament adopted the name Remembrance Day for November 11. On this federal statutory holiday, we remember all the members of Canada’s Armed Forces who have died in action.

• On Remembrance Day, November 11, Canadians observe two minutes of silence at 11 a.m.—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Remembrance Day is called le jour du Souvenir in French.

From 1919 to 1930, November 11 was known as Armistice Day in Canada, since the first official ceremonies to honour fallen soldiers took place on November 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. This date is still known by that name in Britain and in other European countries.

• To mark Armistice Day 2014, over 888,000 ceramic poppies were planted around the Tower of London.

Remembrance Day is also sometimes called Poppy Day, after the poppies worn on that date in memory of fallen soldiers.

We owe the symbol of the poppy to the poem “In Flanders Fields,” written in 1915 by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a field surgeon with the Canadian Army Medical Corps during World War I. After its publication in the British magazine Punch, the poem became popular throughout Britain and North America and eventually inspired the adoption of the poppy as an international symbol of remembrance.