Controversy over Ottawan poet John McCrae's sexual orientation

Employees at the Bytown Museum in Ottawa have stirred quite the controversy with claims that poet John McCrae was homosexual. According to this Calgary Herald article, they say he wrote his best-known poem, "In Flanders Fields," in mourning for his "boyfriend," fellow fallen soldier Alexis Helmer.

The article highlights the dubiousness of these claims:

Francesco Corsaro, the Bytown Museum’s director of development, said in an interview he knew of multiple, credible sources indicating the famed poet was gay.

“There are some people who believe that he was,” said Corsaro.

Yet the only historian who is named by Corsaro as a source disputes the same-sex story.

And several museum directors and researchers questioned the claim, including the Canadian War Museum, which displays McCrae’s service pistol in its collection.

“I have never heard of any of this,” said Dr. Dean Oliver, the national museum’s research director. “There is no corroboration of this in our exhibition.”

Oliver said Canadian museums must follow a “relatively clear” process in documenting any historical claim. “You have to demonstrate this is true as determined in a scholarly fashion,” he said. “Where there is doubt, where there is supposition, the onus is on the museum to defend what it puts out.”

And, later, we get to the (supposed) source:

The Bytown Museum referred questions to an Ottawa historian, Glenn Wright, who it identified as its source. Yet Wright denied involvement with the Bytown exhibit, and said it was a museum curator who “presented to me” the same-sex theory in conversation weeks ago.

“Here we go again,” said an exasperated Wright, a retired federal archivist and president of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa. “I think McRae knew Helmer. I think they might have been good friends.”

The acting curator and president of the museum were unavailable for comment. Hmm.

Here's a link to the poem, both typed and handwritten.