They are poppy pins and coming from a country (France) where November 11th is considered a 'jour férié civil' where everything shuts down entirely, there's something strangely awkward about remembering the slaughter of millions for centimeters of mud in the Flanders with a dollar pin.
On the one hand there's this material red and black felted object cluttering the clothes people wear in public spaces for three good weeks. While loaded with military and nationalistic values, these red dots resonate as things with which to remember and 'commemorate' those dead for the present and consequently a mean to acknowledge and create a collective sense of unity.
And on the other hand there is the 'invisible', and yet just as ritualized and obligatory day off. A whole private twenty-four hours to do anything but the routine. If it is officially a time to reflect about meta-matters of finitude and sacrifice, it isn't lacking it's material manifestations either, such as the flowering of every memorial monument, the presidential speech, televised national ceremony and paper coverage (that, as long as I can remember, always dealt with how many French poilus were still alive- a question that no longer has a numerical answer since le der des der, Lazare Ponticelli, died in March 2008).
If, in the Canadian case there is an obligatory 'bowing to poppy fascism' and on the other, what Adam Gopnik describes as "the French attitude toward any crisis," to pretend that it isn't happening, both of these rituals are associated to remembrance. If nonchalant dignity of the French and the exposed pride of the Canadian are different ways to remember to remember, to be remembered to remember and more importantly to pretend we can never forget, in the end, if both are actualized through diverging performances, both are animated by the shared and essential fear of forgetfulness, which is so intrinsically human.
