How Canada Celebrates the War of 1812 | History | Smithsonian
ou don’t have to go very far across the border to get the Canadian take on the War of 1812.
At passport control in Toronto’s Preston Pearson Airport, a border agent asks an American traveler the purpose of his visit. When told that he is in Canada on business, and part of that business is the War of 1812, she launches into a concise but remarkably informed summary of the war—invoking the iconic Canadian heroes of the conflict, and even suggesting some significant historical spots around Ontario associated with specific engagements of the war worth visiting.
When it is pointed out to the agent that she seemed to know much more about the War of 1812 than your typical American, she raises her eyebrows and smiles, before stamping the visitor’s passport.
“Well,” she says. “That’s because
you lost.”
“It matters to Canada,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor, author of
The Civil War of 1812. “In a way, they can compensate for the great asymmetry of power in our relationship with them by having boasting rights in this obscure war that occurred 200 years ago.”
While boasting about anything outside of hockey prowess is not part of Canadians’ self-effacing nature,
they are proud of their version of the war, which has nothing to do with the rocket’s red glare and bombs bursting in air. The Canadian narrative of the War of 1812 is a David-versus-Goliath struggle. Or maybe it’s the Alliance versus the Empire.
Nowhere is this felt more keenly than in
Reeves’s city—which in 1813, when it was known as York, was invaded by the United States. In the battle, outnumbered and retreating British and Canadian forces set off a 30,000-pound cache of gunpowder, rattling windows on the far side of Lake Ontario, and killing many Americans, including their commander, General Zebulon Pike (of Peak’s fame). The American troops then went on a rampage, burning government buildings in the city. A year later, in retaliation for this,
the British burned Washington, D.C.
“We were outnumbered,” says Thom Sokolski, a Toronto artist who is organizing a bicentennial art exhibit at the Fort called The Encampment. “We were refugees, American Loyalists, British soldiers, First Nations [Native Americans]…a mixed bag of people who realized they had a common land to defend.”
“We showed the Americans of the time that we weren’t just these quiet, timid people of the North,” says Phillip Charbonneau, a resident of nearby Kitchener who was visiting the Fort with a friend on a sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-May. “I think we should take some pride in that.”
“We’re a small country,” says Torontonian Al Leathem, at Fort York with his wife Neisma and nine-year-old son Liam. “This is a nice victory to have, beating the Americans back then, right? It’s important for our identity.”
How Canada Celebrates the War of 1812 | History | Smithsonian
