When patriotic Canadians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries boasted that the War of 1812 was Canada’s “War of Independence” and “marked the beginning of Canada as a nation,” confirming her Imperial allegiance, they were certainly not referring to a series of small-scale skirmishes fought mainly by British regulars in a remote corner of the Empire and owing their success to what Sir James Yeo termed “the perverse stupidity of the Enemy.” A war fought chiefly by Imperial troops arrayed in faceless numbered regiments, with an apathetic, if not openly disaffected, populace, a colony dependent for its survival on a lifeline guarded by the Royal Navy and trusting to American strategic myopia — these facts are hardly the stuff of proud traditions of allegiance. But the militia legend, with Brock as the central focus, the hero-martyr, ironically became the foundation for a tradition of loyal allegiance, central to the Upper Canada/Ontario experience. Building upon the recurring pageantry of allegiance extolling Brock and the militia during the century between Lundy’s Lane and the outbreak of World War I, it was to be a very different war that would be uncritically celebrated and religiously observed. The creative restructuring of the heroic defence of the homeland was fought and refought over the next century with more enthusiastic zeal than the Upper Canadian militia had ever exhibited. Progressively elaborated and romantically embellished, this war would usurp the image of the original conflict and reinterpret it to serve its own patriotic ends, becoming familiar through school texts, children’s literature and histories of the struggle.

The war would be refought on battlefield parks and at the unveiling of monuments of local historical societies and battalions of patriotic associations, with salvos fired from many a pulpit and orator’s platform. By the eve of Confederation, virtually all the elements of a continuing Loyalist tradition had emerged from their efforts — and these were invested with new meaning in the light of the national spirit stimulated in the province by the Confederation movement.

The War of 1812 predictably achieved an early prominence in Canadian historical writing, stemming from a patriotic reaction against what were seen as the flagrant falsehoods and distortions pervading American versions of the struggle. Historians sallied forth as defenders of the faith and guardians of the traditions of 1812 against the latter-day invasions by American historians, filled with with what historian Gilbert Auchinleck termed “Yankee blustering and buncombe.”

The quintessential expression of the heroic traditions and increasingly romantic legends arising from the War of 1812 was undoubtedly Colonel William F. Coffin’s 1812; The War, and Its Moral: A Canadian Chronicle (1864). Writing on the eve of Confederation and in the lengthening shadows of the Americal Civil War, Coffin viewed the events of 1812 as possessing a meaning for Canadians second to no other event in their history. He piously intoned:

1812 — like the characters on the labarum of Constantine — is a sign of solemn import to the people of Canada. It carries with it the virtue of an incantation. Like the magic numerals of the Arabian sage, these words, in their utterance, quicken the pulse, and vibrate through the frame, summoning from the pregnant past, memories of suffering and endurance and of honorable exertion. They are inscribed on the banner and stamped on the hearts of the Canadian people — a watchword, rather than a war-cry.

Coffin’s classic statement epitomized the attempt to forge a national tradition through embellishing and “nationalizing” the patriotic legends surrounding the war and thus strengthening the conception of a common, heroic history shared by all Canadians. His work contained the most florid elaboration of the mythology surrounding 1812, summarizing the romantic traditions of allegiance articulated during the intervening half century. His history was well-suited to the growing central Canadian awareness of their heroic past. The past, he believed, contained principles for the moral instruction of the present, and the adherence to these would guarantee the preservation of all that was worthy and truly great in “national” existence.

Most significantly, Coffin’s major concern was with fusing the militia legend with the emerging cult of Loyalism, and through linking both with the martial exploits of the French Canadians, expanding 1812 to the dimensions of a national struggle. It had been the Loyalists who had saved Upper Canada in 1812, Coffin stated. The province had risen “as a man,” thronging to Brock’s banner to repel the invading republican “hordes.” Everyone rushed to arms: “The invalid, the reckless school-boy, the grave judge of the land, — all shouldered their muskets, and fell into the ranks.” Piously detailing Brock’s exchange of sashes with Tecumseh, Coffin chronicled a further inventive incident of the General’s inspiring leadership. While crossing the Detroit River to attack Detroit, Coffin portrayed Brock as standing erect in the leading canoe. Coffin compared his action to Caesar’s standard-bearer launching himself upon the shores of Britain — but one suspects the immediate parallel in mind was Washington crossing the Delaware as popularized by Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting.

The emphasis in Coffin’s nationalistic account was clearly placed upon expanding the war’s patriotic dimensions beyond 1812. Through folkloric embellishments of lesser heroes, he sought to elaborate and romanticize his epic tableau in a composite panorama and to “Canadianize” the conflict even further. Tecumseh, that “worthy compeer of Spartacus,” was depicted as a native diplomat who had nobly sacrificed his life in the cause of the British Crown. It was Coffin’s affinity for fable and legend that first gave “Mary” Secord her cow and milkpail, and strewed her dangerous path to warn FitzGibbon with wolves, rattlesnakes and terrifying Indians. Laura Secord, never reticent when it came to linking her sylvan ramble with the preservation of the country, had received her only financial reward in 1860 for her perilous stroll and persistent campaigning, a gift of £100 in gold from the Prince of Wales. FitzGibbon, the hero of Beaver Dams, emerged in his own right as “one of the paladins of war, a man of nerve and enterprise” and Colonel John Harvey was portrayed infiltrating the American camp on the eve of his victory at Stoney Creek disguised as a Quaker, selling potatoes and “taking notes.” But the most important innovation in Coffin’s history was the conscious attempt to create a common national tradition from the experiences of the war. It was by no accident that his first volume ended with de Salaberry’s victory at Châteauguay, for this was the French Canadian militia’s counterpart to Queenston Heights. Both national triumphs were fancifully linked with medieval chivalry and knighthood:

Queenston Heights and Châteauguay are to the people of Canada what Chevy Chase and the “Combat des Trentes” were, in olden time, to their martial ancestry — the fountain and the nursery of traditions, which create character and foreshadow a national career not unworthy of the sources from whence they sprang. As “the child is father to the man,” so to nations, honourable traditions are the best guarantee of future greatness....

Thus, the exigencies of tracing the history of the entire war and the growing demands of the nascent Canadian patriotism of the Confederation era dictated a search for additional heroes to expand the nationalist pantheon. Thus through the brave deeds and loyal fortitude of Canadian women, natives, youth and French Canadians, told romantically and imaginatively, Coffin was able to create the distinct impression of widespread Canadian involvement in a “national” struggle. A new emphasis upon later battles served the patriotic purposes of symmetrically ending the war upon the high note of victory on which it had begun and of further illustrating the prowess of the Upper Canadian militia under full-scale and regular battle conditions.

The heroic traditions of allegiance arising from the War of 1812 constituted the chief element of glory in Upper Canada’s brief pioneer era. When later articulated on the national level, this war would serve to foster Canadian patriotism by providing the new Dominion with both an historical sanction and a heroic past. In the broader perspective of the British Empire, the militia’s preservation of Canada for the Empire was to invest Canadian Imperial sentiment with deep indigenous roots that grew out of Canada’s own past. By Confederation, the Upper Canadian militia legend — and its central focus, the symbol of Brock — would be formally incorporated into the Loyalist tradition and impart to it a vital dimension of historical continuity and a distinct martial tone. This synthesis would be given formal literary expression by William Canniff and Egerton Ryerson.

The traditions of allegiance arising from the War of 1812 gave to Upper Canadians a sense of unique identity and distinct community in the decades following the conflict. The martial virtues and heroic qualities attributed to Upper Canada’s defenders of 1812 were probably even more important ingredients in the development of the province’s sense of identity than were their accomplishments. Not only had the actual valiant deeds extolled and peerless events occurred, but the indissolubly intertwined myths and legends surrounding them were firmly implanted in the province’s historical consciousness. In spite of constant elaboration, countless embellishment, frequent subtle shifts in emphasis they were, by 1867, an established tradition. Upper Canada would bequeath a unique heritage of allegiance to the new Dominion. The new Canada was to be but old Ontario writ large.