In the re-enactment and historical communities, opinion is a little mixed as to the work of the late Canadian author, Pierre Berton, on the War of 1812 between America and Canada/Britain.

I believe the problem was that Berton didn't write a dry historical text citing every troop movement and minor scrimmage of the conflict... but went with diaries and letters and tried to show the conflict from the point of view of those involved directly. Not an easy task, and one that rarely wins praise from true historians and personal views often differ from facts.

None-the-less, I enjoyed his books thoroughly (especially the second book, Flames Across the Border and found them sound and have no issues with them whatsoever... in fact, the back of the book holds some interesting notes for people who might be unaware of the relevance and importance (or lack thereof) of this conflict...

I'm reproducing some quotes here from the book in hopes that Pierre Berton Enterprises Ltd. and Anchor Books won't be too mad... I'm hoping this VERY SMALL sampling will not be treading too heavy on copyright infringement... and I do whole-heartedly recommend ANY history "fan" buy and read these books which are excellent reads... and paint a very interesting portrait of a somewhat forgotten war...

Having won the last battle (New Orleans), the Americans were convinced they won the war of 1812. Having stemmed the tide of invasion and kept the Americans out of their country, Canadians believed that they won the war. Having ceded nothing they considered important, the British were serene in the conviction that they won it. But war is not a cricket match. The three nations that celebrated peace were beggared by the conflict, their people bereaved, their treasure emptied, their graveyards crowded. In North America, the charred houses, the untended farms, the ravaged fields along the border left a legacy of bitterness and distrust.

Events, not individuals, it is said, control the course of history. The War of 1812 suggests the opposite, Canada's destiny, for better of for worse, was in the hands of human beings, subject to human caprices, strengths, and emotions. If the ambitious Winfield Scott had waited for the army at Lundy's Lane, if the haughty Commodore Chauncey had deigned to support Jacob Brown at Fort George, could Upper Canada have held out? Tecumseh was unique. If he had not been born, would another have risen in his place?

The war helped set the two countries on different courses. National characteristics were evolving: American ebullience, Canadian reserve. The Americans went wild over minor triumphs, the Canadians remained phlegmatic over major ones. Brock was knighted for Detroit, but there were no medals struck, no ceremonial swords, banquets, or fireworks to mark Châteauguay, Crysler's Farm, Stoney Creek, or Beaver Dams. By contrast, Croghan's defence of Fort Stephenson was the signal for a paroxysm of rejoicing of rejoicing that made him an overnight hero in the United States.

American hero worship filled the Congress, the Senate, and the state legislatures with dozens of war veterans. Three soldiers, Harrison, Jackson, and Zachary Taylor - became president. But there were no Canadian Jacksons because there was no high political office to which a Canadian could aspire. The major victories were won by men from another land who did their job and went home. Brock and de Salaberry were Canada's only heroes, Laura Secord her sole heroine. And Brock was not a Canadian.

The quality of boundless enthusiasm, which convinces every American school child that the United States won the war, is not a Canadian trait. We do not venerate winners. Who remember Billy Green, John Norton, Robert Dickson, or even William Hamilton Merritt? The quintessential Canadian hero was a clergyman, not a soldier, a transplanted Scot, a supporter of entrenched values, a Tory of Tories. Dour, earnest, implacable, John Strachan acquired a reputation for courage and leadership that made him a power in Upper Canada and helped freeze its political pattern.

The war helped entrench certain words in the national lexicon and certain attitudes in the national consciousness. Three words - loyalty, security, and order - took on a Canadian connotation. Freedom, tossed about like a cricket ball by all sides, had a special meaning too: it meant freedom from the United States. Liberty was exclusively American, never used north of the border, perhaps because it was too close to libertine for the pious Canadians. Radicalism was the opposite of loyalty, democracy the opposite of order.

Loyalty meant loyalty to Britain and to British values. Long after Confederation, John A. MacDonald could bring an audience to its feet by crying: "A British subject I was born; a British subject I will die" - meaning that he would never die an American. On this curiously negative principal, uttered by the first prime minister of an emerging nation, did the seeds of nationalism sprout.

British colonial rule meant orderly government, not the democracy of the uneducated mob. The war enshrined national stereotypes: the British redcoats were seen as a regimented force, the Kentucky militia as an unmannerly horde. The pejorative was "Yankee." In the Canadian vernacular, Yankees were everything the York and Montreal elite were not: vulgar, tobacco-chewing upstarts in loud suits, who had no breeding and spoke with an offencive twang. Tiger Dunlop, the British surgeon, captured this attitude when he described how a servant told Red George MacDonald that a Yankee officer was waiting to sell him some smuggled beef. He knew he was a Yankee, he said, "for he wore his hat in the parlour and spit on the carpet." The stereotype persisted into the next century as the political cartoons of the post-war years demonstrate.

The invasion of Canada did not initiate that snobbery: it had been part of the English attitude toward the upstart colony since the days of the Revolution. But the bitterness of war made it acceptable, even desirable, in Canada.

On all this somewhat angry and negative things between two friendly nations from their long past, allow me to quote MYSELF from a post on the One Old Green Bus blog...

This was not a popular war for anyone... it was most often referred to as "Mr. Madison's War"... despite the fact that President Madison wasn't really wanting to go the "armed conflict" route either. Not helping matters were statements from Thomas Jefferson who had said that "...the conquest of Canada would be a mere matter of marching."

(Needless to say, since we're still a sovereign nation and still here, Mr. Jefferson and other's were incorrect... but that's neither here nor there...)

Anyway, to give you an idea of the hatred and seething anger that our countries had for each other...

The Atlantic states and provinces pretty much refused to war with each other.

Sure, there were the odd scrimmages and loads of piracy and whatnot, but not any outright conflict. The New England states, especially Vermont and Massachusetts, refused to send troops to "help" with the unpopular war! The Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia issued a proclamation that Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would abstain from "predatory" behaviour with their neighbours and that trade would continue "without molestation"...

In fact, this went much further...

When the town of St. Stephen found out it's American counterpart of Calais did not have fireworks to celebrate the fourth of July, they obliged with a large gift... of barrels of gunpowder.

According to historical sources, trails between America and Canada through which potash, cattle, pork, and other "smuggled" goods were so well worn, it's difficult to assume that either "military" side couldn't acknowledge that the civilian population were really not at war with each other...

So, think about this for a minute...

There "we" were... at war with each other... but giving gun powder away for the opposites celebration?

After the "sacking" of York (present day Toronto,) Gen. Winfield Scott sent over a boat under a flag of truce, after the American departure from the town, with a load of books that had been taken from a library and a note of apology!

When General Brock died at the Battle of Queenston Heights, despite being an American stronghold at that point, Fort Niagara fired a ceremonial cannon to honour the British general... not in anger, but in respect.

Some may say that there are "tensions" now with Canadian/American relations... but historically, at our "toughest hours" when we were supposed to hate and loath each other, those tensions weren't there.

We were friends... comrades on the same land... fighting the same hardships as settlers and newcomers in a strange environment...

...and that war, despite it's issues, did set up the world's largest undefended border... something I think we're both proud of, despite any recent rumblings.

And today, what really separates us? Sure, there's minor issues with trade and some differences of strategic ideals, but we're pretty much the same. In fact, I think it's great that one can literally "step" from one side of a Republic to another where we still have a Monarchy... (Okay, it's a constitutional monarchy and our Prime Minister and Ottawa makes all the decisions, but we still hold the Queen to high esteem!)