White Poppies

It's been a while since something's made me want to "sound off", but here we go.

White Poppies anger Edmonton veterans

I first heard about this story yesterday evening when one of the local radio stations was interviewing someone who was supporting this white poppy idea. For those who have never heard of this before (which included me up until hearing this interview), the white poppy was created by the "Pledge Peace Union" and the "Women's Cooperative Guild" as an alternative to the traditional red poppy.

The idea behind it, and this is directly from the woman who was being interviewed on the radio, was that it symbolized both a remembrance of those who have been killed in wars, and as a symbol of hope that we will someday live in a world without war (this was supposedly what separated the white poppies from the red ones).

Now, maybe I'm crazy, but isn't that exactly what the red poppy stands for? Isn't that the whole idea of "We will remember them" and "Lest we forget?". I fail to see the difference.

After some poking around on the PPU's white poppy page, I saw this:

The Guild stressed that the white poppy was not intended as an insult to those who died in the First World War - a war in which many of the women (from the Women's Cooperative Guild) lost husbands, brothers, sons and lovers.

So it's not intended as a replacement for the red poppy, yet as far as I can tell it has the same message as the red poppy. The part about the women who lost people in the war was pretty much quoted verbatim in the radio interview I was listening to, and when she said that it came across as a "women's rights" issue, but I might be reading too much into it so I should probably leave that one alone. After all, it wasn't just women who lost people in the war, and it wasn't just men who died in the war. (This is one of those language pet peeves of mine, like when you hear about people trying to "Stop violence against women"...why not just "Stop violence"?)

On a page about the red poppy, it talks about all of the trouble that the red poppy has caused:

... a growing number of people have been concerned about the poppy's association with military power and the justification of war.

I know I only speak for myself here, but never once have I ever heard of anyone using the poppy for this purpose. I know I certainly don't associate the poppy with anything other than remembrance, and I would think that the vast majority of Canadians feel the same way.

I have no problem with people selling or wearing the white poppies, it's a free country after all (which is kinda why we wear these things to begin with), but I just can't wrap my head around what the difference is.