By 1812 conflicts between Britain and France spilled over into a war between Britain and the USA, in which most of the action took place in Canada. When the war began, the US government assumed that the Canadian colonies would grasp the opportunity to throw off British colonial rule and become part of the USA. Thomas Jefferson declared that Canada could be acquired simply by marching North.

It seemed a logical assumption. The colonies of Upper Canada (upstream along the St. Lawrence) and Lower Canada (downstream) were chafing at the British administration and the USA had 16 times as many people as the two colonies combined.

But there were factors that Jefferson did not reckon with. The largest ethnic groups in the USA were people of English and German descent. In Canada, the main ethnic groups are the Scots and the French. The Scots have never graciously accepted English domination and this extended to the idea of domination by people of English descent from the USA.

Another large chunk of the population of Upper Canada (now Ontario) consisted of United Empire Loyalists, people who had left (or been driven out of) the USA during the Revolutionary War because they did not agree with the idea of forcibly overthrowing the established government. These people, who had once been badly mistreated by the US government, were not enthused with the idea of once again coming under US authority.

The population of Lower Canada (now Québec) was largely French-speaking. They were not thrilled about being ruled by the British, but they did not see that being ruled by the Americans would be an improvement. At the battle of Chateauguay in October of 1813, 4,000 US invaders were put to flight by a French-Canadian battalion of 460 men, led by Lt. Col. Charles de Salaberry.

The Indian people of Canada were aware of the violence suffered by Indians in US territory and joined the battle to repulse the American invaders. They were joined by Tecumseh and a contingent of Shawnee warriors from the USA. Three times in his boyhood, US forces had destroyed the villages where Tecumseh lived, then in 1811 his community of Prophet’s Town, Indiana was burned to the ground.

The concept that it was possible for one human being to be the property of another was erased from the laws of all parts of British North America by 1800. Slaves in the southern plantations of the USA got wind of this and began trekking north to freedom. A “Company of Coloured Men” fought in the battle of Queenston Heights. It is not hard to imagine that they had no desire to become part of the USA where they stood a good chance of being returned to slavery.

For these and many other reasons, the US invasion of Canada was a failure. Many Canadians consider the War of 1812 to be the birth of Canadian national awareness. The battlefield successes are the least important part of this. The important thing that happened was that people in Canada awakened to the fact that they were Canadians and had no desire to be governed by the British, the French or the Americans.

There were short-lived rebellions against colonial authority in both Upper and Lower Canada in 1837. In 1841 the Colonial Office in London united the two Canada’s into one, thinking that they could continue to control Canada by playing one group against the other. It was a miscalculation.
Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine in Lower Canada and Robert Baldwin in Upper Canada joined forces to form the Reform Party and won an electoral victory over the entrenched order that had been content to function as agents of Britain.

Baldwin and Lafontaine insisted that decisions affecting United Canada must be made by the elected parliament of Canada, not by colonial officials. And they succeeded in establishing responsible government in Canada. This is a vital part of our history. Canada as a self-governing nation did not begin in 1867, it began in 1848 when the colonial office gave in to the determination of Baldwin and Lafontaine as leaders of the elected majority in Canada’s parliament.

Robert Baldwin never learned French, but he sent his children to schools where they would learn the language. He saw that a partnership of English and French Canadians was necessary for the future of Canada. Robert did not want to see Canada tormented by ethnic and religious strife such as troubled Ireland, from which the Baldwin family had come. Biculturalism, based on respect, equality and language rights, would make Canada a unique nation.

I am a Canadian born, son of a Canadian; the grandson of a man who made Canada his home when it was a howling wilderness. I am proud of my birth, proud of the independence and industry of my fore-fathers, who placed me in the position in which I stand. And I wish to see that national feeling more generally appreciated from Sandwich to Gaspé. – Robert Baldwin