Harper takes a page from The Torch

Prime Minister Harper invokes McCrae's poem here, here, here and here:

"They stood up for Canada. So how do we honour them? We remember them. But we must do more -- we must follow their example," Harper said, before quoting lines from the famous First World War poem 'In Flanders Fields,' by John McRae.

"As the poem begs of us 'Take up our quarrel with the foe. To you from failing hands we throw the torch,'" he said in an address to youth and veterans at Ottawa's National War Museum that kicked off Veterans Week.

Harper noted that generations of young men and women have risked their lives to fight for a just cause.

"So it is today in Afghanistan. More than two-score of our troops have fallen since we joined the United Nations campaign to rescue that country from tyranny, terrorism, and the Taliban following 9/11. This week, we remember them too." he said Monday.

"Our grief is new, so it is acute. Short days ago, as (Lt.-Col. John) McCrae wrote in 1915 of his comrades, these brave young men and women lived felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved. Each casualty hurts. It hurts us deeply."