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January/February 2012 issue	Table of Contents War of 1812 Buried treasure Predicting the storm Diminishing coasts Water rising Nature vs. Disaster Whirlwind wedding Mosaic À la carte The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Book Reviews Reverberations ----------------------------------------------- Past issues archive Subject index Contributors index

It is the afternoon of Nov. 11, 2011, and Remembrance Day ceremonies across the country have ended. This morning, millions of Canadians stopped their daily routines to commemorate, for at least one minute, the many who sacrificed their lives or limbs for their country. Now, most of us have returned to our obligations … work, school, family … while some are spending the rest of the day visiting with war veterans old and young in legion halls and living rooms from coast to coast. Battles and wars — Vimy, Dieppe, Korea, Afghanistan — are being remembered and retold, but few will recall that another important Canadian military event took place on this very day 198 years ago.

An hour’s drive southeast of where I live is a one-time front line in a war between superpowers. The Battle of Crysler’s Farm took place on a site accessible today only by scuba divers and zebra mussels due to the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway. But as Allen Abel suggests in his story about that clash and its modern-day re-enactors from both sides of the border, it saved what is now Ontario from becoming America’s nineteenth state.

The War of 1812 was primarily a naval conflict between Great Britain and the United States, triggered by restrictions on U.S. trade resulting from the British blockade of French and allied ports during the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-15. In the fall of 1813, as the end of the war neared, two large American armies were on the move along the St. Lawrence frontier, planning to converge at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, at the western tip of Île de Montréal, and cut the British off from the heart of the continent. One, a poorly trained and ill-supplied force of almost 8,000 under the command of U.S. Major General James Wilkinson, was descending the river from the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The other, 4,000 strong, was moving north through the sweeping valley of Lake Champlain toward Châteauguay, Quebec.

The St. Lawrence was narrower and faster then, 145 years before seaway engineers flooded its banks, and it was lined with farms and villages, with an infinity of forests beyond. When the eastbound Americans camped on the Canadian side, about halfway between Kingston and Montréal, an outnumbered Anglo-Canadian land force of 1,200 mounted an attack from the west. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Morrison, the soldiers were mustered from the British Army’s 49th and 89th Regiments of Foot (with three guns of the Royal Regiment of Artillery), the Canadian Regiment of Fencible Infantry (recruited from the French-speaking population of Lower Canada), the Voltigeurs de Québec (a light infantry unit from Lower Canada), the Dundas County Militia and Mohawk warriors from Tyendinaga, near Belleville, Ontario.

Crysler’s Farm marked the end of the most serious attempt by the United States to conquer Canada. Soon, Fort Niagara was recaptured, a few more small attacks were repelled and a treaty, signed in the Belgian city of Ghent on Christmas Eve 1814, put an official end to it all, leaving both sides with no new territory but a heightened sense of nationalism. Sure, we’ve since had other squabbles with some of our southern neighbours (remember the Fenian raids?), but we’ve been allies, and great friends, for two centuries. That’s good to remember too.

— Eric Harris

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