Battle Reenactment Brings About Historical Disagreement between Canada and USA

“Wait a minute, didn’t WE win the War of 1812?”

This is the question posed by Marie DeVita, an American, to her friends upon witnessing a Canadian reenactment of the battles fought in Fort George, Ontario.

You certainly wouldn’t think it so if you were at this particular historical reenactment or if you were studying history in any of the Canadian provinces. In history classes, Canadian students grow up learning of British triumph over America attempting to invade what is now Canadian land. Americans view the War of 1812 as a form of the “Second War for Independence” where Great Britain was ousted once and for all from the newborn American continent.

So who won?

Now before you say “it doesn’t matter, it happened 200 years ago”, remember the sense of national pride between the two countries, and how bitter it would taste admitting any sort of defeat to the opponent, especially between two countries that have been waging a healthy rivalry for the past two centuries on nearly everything. 

Victor Suthren, the director of Ottawa’s Canadian War Museum, remembers American tourists getting rather heated, attempting to correct Suthren and explain that the Americans had emerged victorious from the skirmishes across the Canadian-American border.

Suthren returned fire saying “Had we really wanted to put all efforts into an attempt on North America, with the full power of the Royal Navy, it would have resulted in a severe punishment for the Americans”.

Translation: “We could’ve beaten you guys like a drum, but we didn’t feel like it”, which sounds like something you would hear on the elementary school playground. 

Robert Trumbell, and American who participated as an American troop in the reenactments in the 1990s, believes that it was mostly British troops who fought in the battles on Canadian soil during the war. Like many Americans, he insinuates that Canadians should view the conflict between Britain and America, and not Canada and America.

Regardless, both sides think they came out on top. Americans believe that the war was a fledgling American country standing up to its abusive foster parent and breaking free for the final time. Canadians view the sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers in tandem with British forces as a collection of battles that warded off American advancement into northern territories, allowing for modern day Canada to have land to develop on.

Even if most of that land is plagued with permafrost and completely barren and unusable.

All jest aside, we American's love our Canadian & British cousins since this conflict and this selective positioning couldn't change that.