I am watching CBC’s coverage of the US mid-term elections because they’re slightly less annoying than CNN/C-SPAN/Fox/ABC/etc. All the Canadian News people are wearing poppy pins, which led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on how the poppy flower is a symbol for remembering military service members. It dates back to a WWI era poem, and also inspired France to do create a similar bleuet de France.
It also led me to this 2015 article in which some Canadians considered it “defacing” the symbol to use a safer pin design than an inches long stick pin. I’m just glad USians aren’t the only that get mouth-frothing stupid about arbitrary symbols. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/remembrance-day-poppy-pin-that-won-t-fall-off-1.3311799
The “defacing” argument is just because they’re worried their going to sell less flowers. It’s so dumb. The legion even sold them once until they thought it would drop the market out of plastic flowers. The Legion does great things for lots of small communities, but they are also sometimes a bunch of geriatric assholes with their heads up their asses.
They damn near give them away already
Anyone who has dealt with a small town legion understands who they’re dealing with. Every legion has endless stories about infighting and power hunger boomers. One nearby legion burnt down. They raised a ton of money, built a new one and then all the volunteers quit enmass because the president became a tyrant and they closed. (they reopened eventually)
I have no doubt that the poppy pin was one person’s great idea that got squashed by a cabal angry old men and women to put the upstart in their place. A tradition is anything that happened to a boomer twice and traditions are sacrosanct.