Memorial Day

A hundred years ago, the independent country of Newfoundland established a
national Memorial Day to remember the horrors of the first world war and
the folly of war in general. Memorial Day fell on July 1st, and it is
still honoured in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The
widespread flower, usually in bloom at that time, the forget-me-not, was
chosen as an emblem of the day, and people would show up at memorial
services with a sprig of it in their lapel.

After Canada and Newfoundland joined together as one country in 1949, the
poppy, the normal war remembrance flower in Canada, overtook the
forget-me-not which fell into disuse for a generation. Memorial Day
carried on as a "provincial" rather than national holiday, even though it
fell on the same calendar date as Dominion Day, Canada's national day of
celebration of its history.

Forty or fifty years ago, Canada changed the name of its Dominion Day to
Canada Day, and in the early 1980s the federal government started to move
its commemoration towards a kind of faux-July-4th (American national day)
celebration, with public festivities and sunrise events, and brass bands,
and fireworks. In Newfoundland, many saw this change as unseemly, given
the serious and sad quality of Memorial Day. That feeling caused a small
revival of interest in Memorial Day and, along with that, a revival of interest
in the forget-me-not.

Thus, this flower is once again seen fairly frequently now on July First,
Memorial Day,