by Jamie Swift
Those of us who have criticized the Harper government’s love-in
with the War of 1812 have become accustomed to accusations of being spoil
sports. “What’s wrong with
celebrating Canadian history?"
Well, nothing at all. But let’s take a broad look at that handful
of inconclusive skirmishes marked, as they were, by equal measures of human
suffering and military incompetence. Instead of the official prattle about how
the war determined “which flag we salute” (Stephen Harper) and “paved the way
for Confederation” (Toronto Sun),
let’s get beyond the age-regression fantasies of re-enactors who get dressed up
to play soldier as they try to recreate Lundy’s Lane or Chrysler’s Farm.
Tom Korski put it well in a recent Hill Times article. “Any true 1812 recreation would require that
actors be 5’3’, with smallpox scars and bad teeth, forced to gum half-cooked
cornmeal, sleep in the mud and die of gangrene.”
War is a tawdry, grotesque enterprise all too often cloaked in
patriotic garb – an effort as old as it is predictable. History – and the history of war – is
contested terrain. One of the oldest clichés in the book is that history is
written by the victors. So Ottawa’s $18
million effort entails selling the War of 1812 as a birth-of-a-nation story.
But it might also be described as a death of a nation….or many nations.
That’s because a truly conclusive outcome was that First Nations
on both sides of the border between the American republic and the outpost of
empire that was Upper Canada were the true losers in the war. The British
Empire, a ruthless and cynical an enterprise as ever existed, double-crossed
their crucial allies. Although Tecumseh is celebrated as a hero, a harsh fact
remains. After 1814, with the Treaty of Ghent in which the British betrayed the
native claims, First Nations came to be treated as “Wards of the State.” Their
dream of a native-controlled polity at the heart of North America – which the
British had tentatively supported, was gone.
This reality is not, of course, part of the Official Story.
One group of winners in the war was Upper Canada’s
arch-reactionary Family Compact. If we want to celebrate history, why not focus
on Bishop John Strachan and the rest of the men whose malignant rule congealed
in the aftermath of the Treaty of Ghent? These politicians were oligarchs to
the core. Strachan certainly didn’t
suffer from any problems with self-esteem, writing his autobiography at the age
of twenty-one. And the Anglican prelate
was most concerned that the virus
of democracy would creep north, contaminating the yeomen farmers of Upper
Canada with subversive notions that he called “licentious liberty.”
Like the government of Stephen Harper, Bishop Strachan had a
fierce loyalty to the monarchy. And, like the Harperites, he had his own
version of the War of 1812 and its history that he zealously put about.
According to Strachan, it was the sturdy colonial militia – those same yeomen
farmers -- who saved us from the Americans. This “militia myth,” widely
rubbished by historians, was nevertheless deployed by the powerful cleric in an
attempt to turn the brutal little war into a noble, nation-building enterprise.
Strachan did his best to downplay the highly trained British regulars and their
aboriginal guerilla allies who did so much to hold off the Americans.
