Glorifying the War of 1812

PM has an agenda behind proposed celebration.

by Mel Watkins

The War of 1812 was the least of wars. That great popular historian, the late Pierre Berton, described it as "foolish and unnecessary." After the war, the border was the same as it had been at the beginning.

None of this has deterred PM Stephen Harper, in this year of budget cuts, from spending government money on the war's 200th anniversary.

Harper loves war not just for its own sake but because it feeds a manly, muscular, militaristic nationalism, that being the only kind of nationalism he can abide. Having already turned the "good government" of "peace, order and good government" into "bad government," he is now busy turning "peace" into "war."

 

This is one long-time nationalist who is prepared to abandon his patriotism if supporting wars is required to be truly Canadian.

Any war, past or present, serves his purposes. This year he likes the War of 1812. The commemoration will be an advance run for that goriest of wars — that beast of wars — World War I. Here's a prediction: in two years' time, WWI will be celebrated as the most glorious of wars, and hailed as the very guts of our identity.

The War of 1812 was itself collateral damage from the Napoleonic War between Britain and France. The freshly independent America was neutral and what is now Canada was a collection of British colonies. The British ruled the waves and boarded American ships to stop them from supplying France and to impress (that is, kidnap) American seamen for service in the Royal Navy, insisting, the American Revolution notwithstanding, that they were really deserters from British service.

In response, the Americans declared war on Britain and attacked by invading Upper Canada (now Ontario) where the majority of settlers, relatively few in number, were newly arrived Americans, either Loyalists or so-called late Loyalists in search of land.

The oddities of the war were that much of the fighting to repel the Americans was done by British regulars on the land and the British Navy on the sea, while the would-be Canadians, contrary to American expectations, remained loyal to king and empire.

This latter fact is what Harper grasps, claiming that the war itself defined a new national identity — though, absent the war, the settlers were already there and it is not clear why, having left the US, they would have let themselves become assimilated therein.

True, some historians who love wars have been on Harper's side, but this is one long-time nationalist who is prepared to abandon his patriotism if supporting wars is required to be truly Canadian. (As previously mentioned, get ready to hear much more blood-and-guts nationalist talk in 2014.)

The only surprise here is that Harper, who will do anything not to offend Washington, is willing to celebrate a war in which we claim that we beat them, or at least fought them to a draw. But, as it happens, what he is doing will not offend Washington, which has lots of wars to remember and no intention to commemorate this one.

The press release late last year announcing the government-funded commemoration is replete with limp language about creating a Canada respectful of "ethnic diversity." Yet nowhere does the release manage to mention the role of native people, on both sides of the border, whose alliance with the British forces was decisive in defeating the American invasion.

What the Indian tribes wanted was to have a territory, a buffer zone, between the British settlements to the north and the American settlements to the south. Their reward at the end of the war was to receive nothing. But for a Prime Minister who has denied there ever was colonialism in Canada to admit of this betrayal would presumably be too much to ask.

If we are truly to remember wars, the full range of memories should be on display. A better way to commemorate the War of 1812 would be for the Canadian government to commit itself to respecting honouring, and acting on, the rights of the Aboriginal peoples in a Canada that, without their presence at the outset, would not be here to commemorate anything.

References
  Conservative party announcement about 1812 commemoration

 

 

© Copyright 2012 Mel Watkins, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca