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DELIGHTS|canadiana
Win, lose or draw? Mythology of the War of 1812
Laura Neilson Bonikowsky
Two hundred years after the War of
1812 began, the war, and the question
of who won, remains lodged in
the Canadian tendency toward cultural
mythologizing. The war was fought between
Great Britain and the United States
and involved Upper and Lower Canada
(today Ontario and the southern portion
of Quebec, respectively) and many First
Nations. It was a broad war, fought in
the Canadas and across the present-day
states of New York, Maryland, Michigan,
Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana and Alabama
as well as on the Great Lakes, the Atlantic
coasts of North America and Great Britain
and all the way to British Guyana. We
commemorate it in Canada but in Great
Britain and the United States it is largely
forgotten. Many — perhaps most — Canadians
think of it as a war that Canada
won (burning down the American White
House in the process). Canadians tend to
forget that in 1812, Canada was a British
colony. Fighting so far away from the Empire
gave the people of the colony a sense
of belonging to the colony more than to
Britain, and, in some ways, a sense of nationhood
grew from that.
National identity is partly built on legend,
which invokes heroes, whether we
raise them from the playing field or the
field of battle, or mythologize them in our
history books. Among the heroes of the
War of 1812 are Sir Isaac Brock, the “saviour
of Upper Canada”; American president
James Madison; Tecumseh, chief of
the Shawnee nation; and of course, Laura
Secord, who warned the British of an impending
American attack. The war also
produced the American national anthem,
The Star-Spangled Banner, whose “rockets’
red glare, bombs bursting in air” refers
partly to the explosions of British Congreve
rockets fired at the American Fort
McHenry (during the Battle of Baltimore,
Maryland, September 12-15, 1814).
The conflict originated in the Napoleonic
Wars (1799-1815), a series of wars
between France and nearly everyone else
in Europe, driven by Napoleon’s desire
to rule all of Europe by creating puppet
states. The wars caused Great Britain to
adopt measures that the United States
found somewhat irksome, in particular
62
The flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814 — the largest battle flag in existence — measures
36 by 29 feet and was made by Mary Young Pickersgill and her two nieces, who cut its pieces
at home and sewed it at a local brewery. During bombardment, it was pierced several times.
It was restored some 100 years later and taken to the National Museum in Washington, D.C.
FALL 2011 | OCT-NOV-DEC