POSTING #134

Note: Although the weather this fall has been unseasonably mild, the calendar insists that winter is fast approaching. I am feeling strong ancestral urgings to put the tools away in the barn, and push my feet into the oven for at least part of the winter---as I did last year.

This, therefore, will be the last Letter from Virgil Posting until February 12, 2012.

Pat and I wish readers a wonderful holiday season!

See you in February.

Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Bicentennial of the War of 1812-15

This is the official logo for the 1812 Bicentennial that is now appearing on souvenirs of all kinds, everything from hats to key chains.

For the last year or so, I have been working as a volunteer secretary to one of the committees organizing events for Niagara-on-the-Lake's 1812 Bicentennial. We have an excellent website that describes in colourful detail what will happen over the next three years. 

But I thought it might be helpful to provide a secretary's distillation of what, in my view, are likely to be the key events, events that you might like to consider attending.

On January 1, 2012,  the Ontario Lieutenant Governor, the Honourable David Onley, will hold his New Year's Levee, not in Toronto, but in Fort George, here in NOTL

United States President Madison declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812  and instructions were sent to the US military to invade Upper Canada. On the weekend of June 15, 16, and 17, 2012, the Bicentennial gets its official kickoff with grand opening celebrations we are calling the DECLARATION OF WAR! 

There will be a Military Ball in honour of General Brock put on by our Museum on the evening of June 16th. There will be a rich assortment of military and other events during Saturday and Sunday.

On July 13, 14, 15, 2012, in the Niagara River below Fort George there will be an event called The Navy of 1812: Sailors on the Lakes with at least 7 tall ships and 20 large bateaux.

Then the fighting starts!

In July, August, and September of 1812, there were some interesting and significant battles in other parts of the Great Lakes (for example, on August 16, 1812, General Brock persuaded the commandant of  Fort Detroit, General Hull, to surrender by pretending that he had far more troops than he in fact had)  but it was the Battle of Queenston Heights on October 13, 1812 that convinced the residents of Upper Canada that the Americans were not invincible. A recent book makes this point in its title, "12 Hours That Saved a Country" 

There will be a re-staging of this battle during the weekend of October 12 and 13, 2012 with over a thousand re-enactors coming from Canada and the US. It may be hard to get a position near the battle because of the tens of thousands of visitors expected but there will be lots to see in NOTL, especially in and around Fort George----and of course there will also be the Shaw!!

There will be a re-enactment of Brock's funeral on October 14th with his 'body' being carried on a horse-drawn wagon from the site of the battle in Queenston to a ceremonial 'burial' in Fort George.

In May 1813, the war turned against Upper Canada. The Americans, returning with stronger forces and better generals, captured Fort George, and occupied what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake.

In June 1813 in Queenston, Laura Secord overheard American officers, who had commandeered her house, planning an attack on the British/Canadian forces near the site of today's Brock University. Her famous walk through the bush and up the escarpment to warn the British/Canadian troops will be celebrated on June 22, 2013 with the Laura Secord Bicentennial Event and Walk.

To mark the Occupation of NOTL, Canadian flags will be taken down in May 2013, and only US flags of the period will be flown. Students dressed as US soldiers will patrol the streets of NOTL giving out leaflets telling the 'occupied' citizens how they must behave (e.g. no union jacks, no subversive toasts to the king etc.). Canadian and American tourists should enjoy this.

In December 1813 the tide of battle turned,  as British and Canadian forces fought their way back to NOTL. On December 10th, the US forces, frightened by the advancing troops, abandoned Fort George and fled across the Niagara River to Fort Niagara. Before fleeing, they burned almost all the homes and businesses in NOTL and Queenston, leaving the residents without shelter at the start of a hard winter.

On December 7, 2013, we will be staging a Son et Lumière, "Niagara on Fire", at the NOTL Courthouse with videos depicting the burning of the towns and the hardship caused to the residents.

Both Canadian and American historians agree that the burning of NOTL was a colossal military blunder. It can be argued that if the Battle of Queenston Heights convinced the residents of Upper Canada that the forces of the US were not invincible, then the burning of NOTL and Queenston convinced them that they had no choice but to expel the invaders, and build a separate nation.

The War of 1812 was ended by the signing of the Treaty of Ghent by Britain and the US on December 24th. The treaty was ratified by the US Congress on February 16, 1815.

Although the treaty wasn't ratified until February 1815, peace was effectively restored in the Niagara Peninsula in the summer of 1814. We have decided therefore to commemorate the signing at some point in September 2014 (dates not yet decided) when the weather will be more pleasant. This will be an enormous Bi-National event to celebrate 200 years of peace, with, we hope, the President of the US and the Prime Minister of Canada.

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Niagara-on-the-Lake is not a big town---only 15,000 souls---but it loves its history and it thinks big.

The next three years are going to be exciting!

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If you would like to learn more about the War of 1812, I would suggest checking PBS program listings to see when they will be re-broadcasting their superb video, The War of 1812, first shown in October this year. We decided to buy a copy, to keep (available through PBS or Amazon for about $20).

I would also recommend Cameron Porteous', "12 Hours That Saved a Country", mentioned above---a slim book, illustrated with paintings by Porteous. The author, who has a home in Queenston, has worked hard to get his facts right and to give us a vivid, visual understanding of what happened during those critical 12 hours.

For a definitive (in my opinion) account of the war, I would recommend Professor Alan Taylor's book "The Civil War of 1812". You may wish to check my Posting #96 in which I discussed attending a lecture by Prof. Taylor on his book.

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See you on February 12, 2012 for Posting #135 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I have just uploaded Posting # 6 on my The Icewine Guru blog. You can read the Guru's year-end thoughts at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #96

"The Civil War of 1812"

I have a confession to make.

While I was studying Canadian history at high school and later at university I found the War of 1812 boring---extremely, even deadly boring.

To be sure there was the tragic story of brave General Brock being shot and killed by an American sniper as he led his troops up the hill in an effort to retake Queenston Heights from an American force that had managed to capture it.

And I liked the story about the tall monument on the top of Queenston Heights built in his honour by a grateful nation, topped with an immense statue of the General with a finger pointing---it is claimed---at Washington, with the implicit message, 'Don't ever try that again!'

I also admired the bravery of Laura Secord who trekked through dense bush to warn the British that the Americans had invaded---although I didn't much like her chocolates.

But the War seemed to be about several years of border skirmishes, the dates and locations of which I had trouble remembering. And when it ended, the pre-war borders remained intact.

My views about the War began to change after we moved to Virgil 2 years ago. Planning for a War of 1812 Bicentennial was heating up. I joined  one of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bicentennial committees and started dipping into some histories about the War.

But last weekend, my views about the War did a sudden shift to a full 180 degrees away from 'boring'. I went to Buffalo for a lecture given by Professor Alan Taylor who has just finished a massive history of the War, called "The Civil War of 1812". (Pat couldn't come---she was attending a lecture on how to cut out patterns to make 1812 vintage clothes for us to wear during the Bicentennial!)

Taylor, a native of Maine,  teaches American and Canadian history at the University of California at Davis and has received a number of prestigious awards for previous books, including a Pulitzer Prize.

As I listened to the professor, I remembered a discussion with a retired historian in Kingston. She said that in history it was not important to know that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Instead, it was important to know why it couldn't have taken place in 966 or 1166.

Professor Taylor's talk was full of the 'why's' of the War of 1812.

And suddenly, I saw the War in a new light and realized that it wasn't boring at all.

Let me jot down some points that I took away from his talk and from the questions period that followed. I should stress that these are my conclusions, not necessarily those of the good professor.

1. Americans have been taught that the British started the war, and that it consisted mainly of some naval battles and the glorious victory at New Orleans when General Andrew Jackson defeated an invading British force (this was in January 1815, a month after a peace treaty had been signed in Europe but word hadn't yet reached the North America combatants). Out of this battle came the US national anthem and the myth that the US won the War.

2. In fact, the US started the war, with a Declaration of War passed in 1812, primarily with the support of southern and western members of Congress. Congress decided to leave town without voting tax increases for the cost of the war, the argument being that the war would  cost very little because the residents of Upper Canada would welcome the US troops as liberators and would provide them with free shelter and food. (Remind you of another war?)

3. Americans have not been taught that most of the fighting in the War took place in the Great Lakes basin and that the US lost most of those battles.

4. The War should be seen as a kind of civil war with Americans, British Subjects, Irish settlers and natives on both sides of the border fighting each other, sometimes literally brother against brother.

5. Canada would almost surely have lost the war if it had not been for the support of native warriors at critical points. Instead of rewarding the natives for their invaluable help, Canadian authorities treated them abominably.

6. By the autumn of 1814, the War had almost bankrupted the US, and states in the north-east which were furious at the western and southern states who had pushed for the War, were threatening to secede from the union. If Britain hadn't offered the US a peace treaty, the US would probably have gone broke and split up.

7. Taylor argues that the War was not inconsequential as many American histories have suggested but that it had profound consequences for the US.

8. He sees the American Revolution as having two acts. The first act was the successful fight by the American colonies against the British in the period from 1776-1783. But that act left unresolved the issue of whether the new nation would tolerate a northern nation that was British. The second act was the War of 1812 in which the US attempted to finish the revolution by taking over its northern neighbour.   

9. The failure of the US invasion in the Great Lakes basin convinced most Americans that they had to share North America, and this in effect marked the true end of the American Revolution.

10. And on this side of the border, the War convinced Upper Canadians that they had to create their own country, a country that would have friendly relations with the US but would have to have its own institutions and values.

So, both nations were dramatically shaped by what I had thought was a boring War.

Not boring, at all.

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My experiences with the border officers as I travelled to Buffalo for the lecture and later returned to Canada were interesting.

At the US border, the officer when he heard I was going to hear a lecture on the War of 1812 said, "Wow, I love the history of that period. I wish someone had told me about the lecture."

At the Canadian border on the way home, the officer when he heard that I had been to the War lecture almost hissed, "How biased was it?"

I said that I thought the lecture was fair and even-handed.

Looking skeptical, he asked, "Did they tell you that General Brock died when he fell off his horse, not when he was leading his troops into battle---stuff like that?"

I shook my head, and said that the speaker hadn't said anything like that.

With a look that said he was disappointed in how gullible I was, he waved me through.

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One shouldn't extrapolate from two brief encounters.

But I will, anyway.

It seems to me that many Americans, including tourists who will come to our Bicentennial, are ready for a more accurate account of the War---an account of the kind conveyed in Professor Taylor's book.

For our part, we will have to suppress the urge to get even for past insults and slights. I believe the expression is, 'suck it up'.

In that connection, I am told that when the Bicentennial folks in Niagara-on-the-Lake were trying to find a motto to go below the logo they were developing, someone facetiously suggested, 'We Beat the Bast--ds!'.

It was decided to go with 'Upper Canada Preserved".

A wise choice!

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If you like history, and relatives or friends are asking for hints about what you would like for Christmas, you might suggest Professor Taylor's book. I bought a copy at the lecture and it is a wonderful read.

Taylor is a skilled, subtle and good-humoured story teller who, I believe, has 'reset' the history of that period. All future histories of the War of 1812---whether written by Canadians or Americans---will have to start with his work.

Here are the details of the book:

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor, published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group,

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See you on November 28th for Posting #97 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.