Courtesy Wikicommons
Quebec after the 1775 American attack

By Shawn MacWha

Local Journalism Initiative

For more than 150 years, Canada and the United States have stood side by side as sibling countries, born of the same mother. Generations of people have crossed back and forth across the border in search of families, friends, economic prosperity, freedom from prosecution, or maybe just a summer holiday. Our armies have fought and died together to defend our ideals, and our soil, including the time in 1943 when 5,700 Canadian soldiers helped to retake the Alaskan island of Kiska from Japanese invaders – the only time that American territory was occupied during the Second World War. More recently our economies have become almost inextricably intertwined, with goods moving throughout the North American marketplace generating wealth for hundreds of millions of people. 

The recent announcements by the current U.S. administration represent a stark deviation from this pattern of cooperation that has awoken both patriotism and concern amongst Canadians. But the dark words coming out of Washington this winter are by no means the first time that our American neighbours have stricken out at Canada. Indeed during the early years of our history there were several times when relations were so sour that the United States threatened, and even used, military force against our country.

Such aggression was seen at the very beginning of the American nation when, in September 1775, one of the first acts of the Revolutionary Army was to invade Britain’s Canadian possessions. That autumn American Generals Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold led a two-pronged attack upon Montréal and Québec City which came north through the Richelieu and Chaudière valleys, bracketing the territory that would later become the Eastern Townships. The strategy behind this attack was to undermine London’s ability to counter the revolution by diverting British forces away from their American colonies and to inflame French-Canadian opposition to the Crown. Unfortunately for the Americans they encountered stiff resistance at Fort Saint Jean (Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu) and while the British garrison there eventually surrendered after 45 days of fighting Montgomery’s drive north was delayed well into autumn. Bypassing Montréal the Americans resumed their push into Canada and in December, 1775 their two columns met just south of Québec City. Exhausted, frost-bitten, and outnumbered, the Americans attempted to take the city on December 31^st and were soundly defeated, leading them to abandon their aspirations in Canada and retreat south across the border.

Less than 40 years later, during the War of 1812, there were several more American attacks across the border, including into Québec. In November, 1812 American forces under Major-General Henry Dearborn, who was himself a veteran of the failed 1775 incursion, once again sought to take Montréal via the Richelieu valley. Setting off with a force of more than 5,000 men from Champlain, New York Dearborn only made it a few kilometres into Canada before his force ran into trouble. Facing a defensive line along the north shore of the Lacolle River the Americans attempted to encircle the British, Canadian and Mohawk forces. Alas in the confusion of the battle the Americans lost track of the defenders, and each other, and ended upon firing upon their own forces, breaking their momentum, and their will for further battle.

Later American movements into Canadian territory included a November, 1838 raid across the St. Lawrence River when a group known as the Hunter Patriots landed near Prescott, Ontario in the hopes of founding a Canadian republic. Approximately 250 men crossed over from the town of Ogdensburg, New York and in the ensuring Battle of the Windmill were thoroughly defeated by defending British regulars and Canadian militia. Three decades further on Canada once again faced armed attacks from the United States when members of the Fenian Brotherhood, a group of Irish nationalists, conducted a series of raids into Canada between 1866 and 1871. The idea behind these attacks was to seize Canada and then exchange it back to the United Kingdom for Irish independence. Here in the Eastern Townships a force of more than 1,000 Fenians crossed into Québec in June, 1866 and briefly occupied the area around Frelighsburg. They were met with swift and strong Canadian resistance and soon surrendered although another unsuccessful attack was launched against the same area in 1870.

While American regulars have not attacked Canada since Confederation it was largely due to the spectre of a hostile Union Army that we came together as a country in the first place – a country that was forced to dispatch soldiers to reinforce Canadian claims to the Yukon in 1898 and a country that the American military maintained battle plans against until as late as 1939. Most of these American threats and actions against Canada suffered from the same problem in that they greatly underestimated the willingness of Canadians to defend their land. Many of the commanders who led these attacks, and the American journalists who cheered them on, were under the false impression that deep down inside Canadians secretly wanted to be Americans. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

For all of our lives we have lived with the notion of Canada and the United States sharing the longest undefended border in the world. While the 9/11 terrorist attacks altered that openness somewhat the most recent efforts of the U.S. government represent the greatest change in our bilateral relations in more than 100 years. Yet despite that challenge we will get through this kerfuffle (to use a Canadian word) just as we have gotten through every other American threat to our homes, or as our anthem so poetically puts it, nos foyers. But to do that we need to be crystal clear about who we are as a people. We are a people who love diversity, equity, inclusion, acceptance, bilingualism, the idea that your level of health care should not be determined by your level of wealth and the knowledge that basic manners dictate that you should not yell at a person who you’ve invited into your house. Even if it is a white house.