An e-mail this morning drew my attention to the use of the poppy, which, until this morning, was prominently displayed at the top of the right hand navigation bar at Bond Papers for more than a week.
As it drew closer to November 11, I went looking for an appropriate image to use and found, largely by accident, a very attractive rendering of the poppy. Turns out it was actually the Royal Canadian Legion's official version.
Perfect, so it seemed. I also looked for a link to the Legion's Poppy Fund but couldn't find one; there was plenty of background on the poppy and remembrance but nothing that offered an opportunity to contribute to the fund and thereby support the legion's work on behalf of veterans.
The e-mail linked to a post which ultimately linked back to a controversy from 2005 about the use of the poppy by Pierre Bourque on his site. Copyright and trademark are serious issues so if the Royal Canadian Legion is actively defending its rights, Bond Papers will respect that. The poppy is gone.
But here's the thing.
I scoured the Legion website trying to find links, images that were available for use or even a specific e-mail address for the Legion's Dominion Command communications section.
Nada.
Zip.
Rien.
Compare that to the Royal British Legion site. There are numerous contacts for poppy images, corporate relations and the Poppy Appeal.
In place of the poppy, you'll find at the right an image for the Veteran's Affairs Remembrance Week. Veterans' Affairs Canada not only has a page with good links and useful information, VAC actually makes versions of its banner available in varying sizes for just such uses as the one here at Bond Papers. On top of that VAC supplies html code - that's right they actually make it easy for people to take the images and reproduce them, complete with embedded links back to the VAC website.
The week leading up to Remembrance Day is a time of respect and remembrance. That was the intention of using the poppy and that remains the intention. Out of respect to the Legion, its members and their rights, the poppy is gone. The VAC banner is a fitting alternative.
If the Legion had provided any useful contact information beyond the standard "info@" junkmail address, I might have sought permission. Frankly, since a better address isn't available and since the Legion hasn't gone through the effort of offering any simple code or an appropriate portion of their website to link to, I took it that they really weren't interested in the contact in the first place. That's my assumption and mine alone, but when people don't make it easy for anyone to contact them, that usually signals disinterest.
The Legion might want to rethink their approach.
-srbp-