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Footsteps of Brock
For a number of years, Ed Alexander and his
friends have made an interesting trek, retracing
the land portion of Brock's journey that took him
from York to glory at Fort Detroit. He uses it as a
chance to get out, explore a little history and raise
some money for some great causes.
By Ed Alexander
Fruits of the Conflict
To the tune of The Battle of New Orleans.
In 1812 we quickly deployed
along with General Brock
on over to Detroit.
We took along some Indians
and we took along some tack
And we caught the Yanks a napping
like at Michilimackinac.
We fired our cannon and the Yanks began a duckin
You couldn’t see as many
as you could a while afore.
We fired once more and
General Hull surrendered
Surrended all his army along with all his fort.
Ed Alexander's journey
On Saturday, August 2nd, 2003, Ed and his running partners Gord and
Trevor Harthun set out to cover the 100 kilometers of the land portion of
General Isaac Brock’s journey of August 7, 1812 to Detroit. Brock left
York (Toronto) on August 6, and sailed to Hamilton where there was a
major garrison. From thence he traveled by horse to Brant’s Ford, the
village of the Mohawks, and from there south to Port Dover, arriving on
August 8. Brock’s ill advised and suicidal expedition against a vastly
superior force at Detroit resulted in the miracle which became the spark
that preserved the land which became Canada.
And since they had three days to kill that weekend, they came back the
same way. The course started at the site of the fort at Hamilton,
travelled along the Hamilton Brantford rail trail which parallels Governor
Simcoe’s pioneer road as far as His Majesty’s Chapel of the Mohawks
and Kanata, a restored Mohawk village in Brantford. Crossing next the
Grand River, we followed the roads we believe followed the original trail
from Brant’s Ford to Port Dover.
This run was attempted on behalf of the Canadian Cancer Society to
raise funds for their ongoing work and for the Church of the Ascension in
downtown Hamilton.
Now in its fourth year, this fundraising effort had an added twist this
year. In consideration of a minimum donation of $100 per day to one of
the named charities, members of the public were invited to join the pair
on one or more days.
Mercifully, the war of 1812 did not last longer than it did, judging from
the poor quality of the music it produced. Unlike the American Civil War,
which produced such immortal songs as The Battle Hymn of he Republic,
When Johnny Comes Marching Home, Tenting on the Old Campground,
Just Before the Battle, Mother, We Are Coming Father Abraham, and
dozens more, none of the songs listed at any War of 1812 website is
familiar to anyone whosoever today, except for the Star Spangled
Banner. And only through blind prejudice could one prefer this over The
Battle Hymn of the Republic, or America the Beautiful (written in 1893).
The only other song that we associate with the War of 1812 was
actually written in 1959, the Battle of New Orleans, which one still
occasionally hears played on the radio. On the Canadian side, we have
the long forgotten:
The Bold Canadian
Come all ye bold Canadians,
I'd have you lend an ear
Unto a short ditty
Which will your spirits cheer,
Concerning an engagemen
We had at Detroit town,
The pride of those Yankee boys
So bravely we took down.
The Yankees did invade U.S.,
To kill and to destroy,
And to distress our country,
Our peace for to annoy,
Our countrymen were filled
With sorrow, grief and woe,
To think that they should fall
By such an unnatural foe.
Come all ye bold Canadians,
Enlisted in the cause,
To defend your country,
And to maintain your laws;
Being all united,
This is the song we'll sing:
Success onto Great Britain
And God save the King.
Trad., curren to 1812-1813.
Other than some pretty dreadful and forgettable music, the war
produced precious little else, and the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the
conflict on Christmas Eve, 1814, was based on the principle of s tatus
quo ante bellum, that is, that the geography should be returned to
exactly as it was before the outbreak of hostilities, with the British giving
Michilimackinac and Fort Niagara and other places back to the U.S., and
receiving western Ontario in return.
The Nature of the Conflict
Like all wars, as it progressed, the combat became more desperate and
increasingly involved the loss of civilian life and property, so thank
goodness they didn’t have all the rousing songs of the Civil War to
encourage them to prolong the mayhem and slaughter.
The bad stuff really sort of started when the Americans seized York
(present day Toronto) in April, 1813. The outnumbered British retreated
from the town, but not before lighting a long fuse to the large powder
magazine, which blew up just as the Americans arrived in force, killing
and wounding a considerable number of them (including the discoverer
of Pike’s Peak). In angry retaliation, the remaining U.S. troops burned
the Legislature, which was totally against the explicit rules of warfare
agreed upon by both sides at the outbreak of the war.
In December of the same year, American commander George McClure
burned the town of Newark on the Niagara River to the ground in the
middle of winter with less than a day’s notice to the inhabitants.
Despite quick and earnest apologies from the U.S. government, the U.S.
citizens living in the Chesapeake Bay area would later take the brunt of
the retaliation for this, as a massive British fleet roamed the Bay at will
in 1814, burning and looting as they pleased, including most of the
public buildings of Washington, D.C.
But generally, it was, by any standards of warfare since then, a pretty
tame affair, which may explain why it got such a bland name, instead of
something like The Napoleonic Wars, The Hundred Years War, The
French and Indian War, the War of Spanish Succession, or the like.
However, there was one fairly significant result which was basically
accomplished within seven weeks of the unilateral U.S. declaration of
war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812, and that was the preservation of
Canada under British control west of the province of Quebec. Some
scholars have speculated that, if not for the war, Ontario and points
west would more likely have been assimilated by the United States and
all agree that the majority of the population in Ontario would not have
been opposed to union – until they were invaded, that is, and a different
view of the U.S. and their form of government emerged.
The Cause of the Conflict
The ultimate cause of the war, however, rested with Napoleon, whose
conquest of Europe could only be countered by the huge 1,000 ship
British navy. This led to (1) huge profits for U.S. merchant vessels trading
with France despite the British blockade, and (2) subsequent
extraordinary demand for able seamen and the resulting quadrupling of
wages, and (3) the desertion of some 25-50,000 British sailors to the U.
S. merchant marine. In desperation, the British took to boarding U.S.
ships at sea and “impressing” these deserters or anyone that looked
like a deserter. This wasn’t easy, since everyone looked pretty much the
same and spoke the same language.
Rather than look at the ultimate cause of this situation, however, and
motivated by the huge profits of the Continental Trade, the U.S. sought
to end this practice of impressment by declaring war on Britain, which
was pretty well tied up with Napoleon in Spain at that time. Due to the
length of time it took to communicate across the Atlantic, the U.S. did not
learn that the British had on June 16 cancelled the Orders in Council
which had sought rather unsuccessfully to restrict U.S. trade with France.
Upon learning of this, U.S. President James Madison immediately
commissioned a peace delegation to Europe and proposed a cease fire
to Governor General Prevost in Montreal. Prevost may have been
momentarily fooled, but General Brock was not, as Madison did nothing
to slow the advance of U.S. forces towards the Canadian border on all
fronts.
Other forces were at work in the U.S.. Many, including the President,
saw the possibility of seizing all of Canada as a real bonus to the conflict
over international trade rules. Former President Thomas Jefferson even
mused that the capture of Canada would be “a mere matter of
marching.” Talk about bad karma: it was President Jefferson’s policies of
“reduce the deficit at all costs” that had left the U.S. with a military
unable to prosecute a war against Canada. He went bankrupt during
the war when the British blockade of the U.S. Atlantic coast caused the
collapse of the southern U.S. agricultural industry.
Situation Report
Nonetheless, the U.S. was a nation of some eight million persons, while
in all of Canada between the Detroit River and Halifax harbour, there
were only some 500,000 inhabitants, and perhaps only some 30,000 in
all of Ontario. In charge of both the political and military operations in
this province was General Isaac Brock.
Born and raised on the small island of Guernsey in the English Channel,
Brock had but 1,500 regular British troops with which to defend a border
close to 1,000 miles in length between Kingston and Detroit. Displaying
great astuteness developed over ten years in the country, Brock defied
what would appear to be insurmountable odds against him, correctly
anticipated the American plan to defeat the British interests in Canada,
and had in place the perfect plan to completely thwart it.
Brock correctly predicted that the Americans would launch a three
pronged assault against Canada, one force marching against Montreal,
another attacking across the Niagara River, and the third approaching
from the west across the Detroit River. Brock knew that the Americans
would not have a force that could in any way seriously threaten the
major British garrison at Montreal for a long time to come, and his
informants in the Niagara frontier reported that U.S. forces there were
woefully untrained and would not be in any condition of strength to
launch an assault across the River for several months to come.
This left him enough time to deal with his right flank on the Detroit River
where U.S. War of Independence hero General William Hull had led an
invasion from Detroit across the river in mid July and was threatening
the British garrison at Fort Malden.
Brock Swings Into Action
Upon learning of the American declaration of war, Brock immediately put
his plan into action. First, he dispatched a force of British regulars and
natives from St. Joseph Island to seize Michilimackinac (pronounced,
despite my lyrics above, Michilimacki naw). Since the U.S. government
neglected to inform this remote but crucial outpost of the
commencement of hostilities, the forces there were completely
unprepared and handed over the keys without firing a shot. This
immediately encouraged the native tribes who were gathering under the
leadership of the great leader Tecumseh, who saw in any British victory
a chance to preserve their lands against the encroachment of the
Americans into lands granted to them south of the Great Lakes.
Brock Leaves For Port Dover
At York at the end of July, Brock called out the militia and ordered 100 of
them on to Port Dover, where they were joined by forces diverted from
Niagara and militia raised locally by the dictatorial founder of the local
settlement, Colonel Talbot. Brock met with the provincial Assembly in
York to get their backing for defense efforts and funding. But as they
seemed more interested in debating a school bill, on August 5th, he
prorogued (dismissed) the Assembly and sailed that evening along the
shore of Lake Ontario to Burlington Bay at the far western end of the
Lake. Here Brock had some years ago established a major garrison near
the property of local fur trader Richard Beasley overlooking the Bay. In
retracing Brock’s footsteps to Port Dover, we can speculate that he
quartered for the night in Beasley’s home, the foundations of which are
now under Dundurn Castle.
Evidence of his Route
Very little else remains of the record of his trip, except that he reportedly
stopped at the Mohawk Village on the Grand River, probably arriving
there on the evening of the 6th, and leaving the next day for Port Dover
after holding council with the Six Nations, according to one source, to
solicit their support. Another source has him arriving in Port Dover on
Lake Erie on August 8, about forty miles south of the Ford. It is fairly
certain that Brock would have traveled from Burlington Heights to the
Mohawk Village at Brant’s Ford along Governor Simcoe’s Road, which
was laid out in the 1780’s as a road to open up the interior of the
province to settlement, and crossed the Grand River near Paris on its
way to St. Thomas and London.
At Brantford, I looked on the map for roads south from there that were
not straight, indicating a more primitive origin. This led to a foray by car
along several options, all leading through Waterford. At this small town,
I discovered an historical plaque placing the foundation of this
settlement on Nanticoke Creek in 1790. It looked like this was the right
way, since a forty mile trip by horse in a day and a half would not leave
any time for foraging, and Sovereign’s Mills, as the town was then
known, had a mill. South of Waterford lies the hamlet of Bloomsburg.
This consists of but a few houses and a Baptist Church.
I stopped to look in the ancient cemetery for the dates on the oldest
markers, but was sidetracked by a man mowing the grass who looked
old enough to actually know something worth knowing. He and I were
joined shortly by the pastor of this brick country church built in 1850,
Rev. Allan Burr. They didn’t know the date of the first burial, but when
asked, quickly affirmed that this was the road traveled by Brock. The war
would visit this area several more times during the conflict, in
devastating and 2 destructive raids by American forces, and I suspected
that there was an inherited memory of those years among many in the
area.
From there the trail goes cold, but it made sense to follow the road
south from Bloomsburg to Simcoe from whence there’s a five mile long
footpath along an abandoned rail line along the Lynn River to Port
Dover. If not the actual course Brock followed, at least it would more
closely emulate the environment he encountered along his way than the
miles and miles of paved road we’d be forced to travel.
Brock Arrives at Port Dover
When Brock arrived at Port Dover, he was met by the 200 odd militia
raised there by Colonel Talbot, in addition to the 100 sent there earlier
by Brock from York, as well as the 60 regular troops from Niagara, plus a
whole flotilla of leaky boats borrowed from the local populace of farmers
and fishermen. This small armada then endured 200 miles of horrible
weather on the lake without respite for five days before arriving at the
mouth of the Detroit River at midnight on August 13.
The Capture of Detroit
Once there, Brock learned that General Hull, unnerved by the easy
capitulation of Michilimackinac and news of the approaching confluence
of Brock and the great Shawnee Chief Tecumseh in his front yard, had
retreated back to U.S. territory. His supply lines to Ohio were now
seriously threatened, and he was contemplating abandoning Detroit.
Hull made the mistake of committing his fears to paper, and these fell
into the hands of Brock when the U.S. ship Cuyahoga Packet was
captured by the British fleet which dominated Lake Erie, further
emboldening his British adversary. Nonetheless, Hull retained the upper
hand. He had possession of a fort that in no way could be taken by the
force available to Brock. Hull also outnumbered Brock 2,500 to 1,000
troops, and would undoubtedly have defeated him if he had cared to
venture outside his bastion.
Aftermath
The rest is history. William Hull, whose nephew Isaac Hull became one of
the greatest heroes of the war as the commander of the frigate The
Constitution, would himself face a court martial and would spend the
rest of his long life trying to clear his name. Brock would go on to
immortal fame, and go there quickly. Returning immediately to the
Niagara frontier to meet the threat there, Brock was killed leading his old
regiment, the 49th, against the Americans who had crossed the River at
Queenston on October 13. Brock’s genius and panache had united a
province and filled it with a grim determination. One hundred years later,
Brock’s investment would pay off for the Mother Country, as some
600,000 young Canadians would cross the ocean in response to her
need, and more than 60,000 of these would never return.
But battles are but a miniscule part of the life of war. Far greater time
and effort go into achieving position and maintaining it. The life of the
common soldier usually involves months and months of incredible
hardship and deprivation, exposure to all the extremes of climate
involved living out of doors. Until the 20th century, the major cause of
death for soldiers was not battlefield wounds, but disease, and when
the day of battle was upon them typically only 75-80% were among the
“effectives” fit for duty. The battle for Detroit only lasted a day – but
what was it like getting there?
Brock’s Steps Retraced
It was against this historical background that Gord and son Trevor
Harthun and myself decided to retrace the land portion of Brock’s
journey to Detroit, between Hamilton and Port Dover. The goal of Brock’s
brave venture was to save British North American from the corruption of
Republicanism and keep it safe in the bosom of the Empire. Our goals,
perhaps more modest, were to revisit and discover as much as possible
of the historical route he took, and, once again, to raise money from our
suffering for the Church of the Ascension and the Canadian Cancer
Society. With this in mind, on the morning of August 2, 2003, the three of
us set out from the site of the garrison on Burlington Heights, and
proceeded by foot along the rail tracks which lead out towards West
Hamilton and Dundas, and onto the Hamilton Brantford Rail Trail.
This trail runs roughly parallel to Governor Simcoe’s original route to
Paris and the west, and more closely approximates the environment of
that time than does the current asphalt highway. We’d traveled this way
dozens of times in the past, including on our first fundraiser in 2000.
Assisted once again by friend Paul Westerhof driving the aid van, we
progressed along this fine gravel pathway gradually uphill to Jerseyville,
then further along to Brantford during which time we experienced an
hour or two of very heavy rain. We passed the only remaining structure
of the Mohawk Village, His Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks, built
in 1784 as a gift to replace the Royal Chapel they lost in New York state
when they were forced out following the American War of Independence.
South from Brantford
A few miles further along the trail, we came to the site of Brant’s Ford in
downtown Brantford, but eschewed the fording and took the long bridge
over and turned on to Mount Pleasant Road, a winding, rolling and
pleasant paved road that passes not far from the Alexander Graham Bell
homestead. The environment quickly changes to countryside and in
another hour, we approached the hamlet of Oakland from the east.
Malcolm’s Mills
As did General Duncan MacArthur on a day in November of 1814 with
800 mounted soldiers. Having undertaken an excursion of destruction
from Detroit against the citizens of southwestern Ontario, but thwarted
by high water at Brant’s Ford from ravaging the countryside around
Hamilton, he and his party were intent to proceed to south Port Dover to
burn it to the ground for the second time that year. At Malcolm’s Mills, as
Oakland was known then, he was challenged by a much smaller force of
Canadian militiamen, whom he routed in short order. This marks the last
battle fought on Canadian soil against the invading army of a foreign
nation. Our goal was to accomplish the 72 kilometers to Waterford this
day, but our progress had been slowed by the rain and now Gord and I
both had some resultant blisters. Thus we called it a day at 65
kilometers an hour south of Oakland at Wilsonville, and vowed to get in
a full 80 km the following day.
The Journey Interrupted
Sunday came, and we were unable to get Paul out of bed, so the three
of us ran a 40 km loop of the Bruce Trail, during which we all resolved to
come back the following Saturday and run the entire way from Port
Dover to Hamilton, 100 kilometers, in one day.
Our Pilgrimage Continued
Saturday, August 9th, came right on schedule, as did Paul Westerhof,
and we all set off to Port Dover. Once there, we got underway by
around 6:00 a.m. from the beach of this lovely tourist and fishing village
on Lake Erie. We found no trace of the original village, which follows
from the fact that it was burned not once but twice during 1814 by
marauding American troops. A quick right on Main Street and a mile
along the sidewalk took us to the entrance to the Lynn Valley Rail Trail.
This is a lovely and tame path that crosses and recrosses the Lynn River
more times than you’d care to count over the original railway bridges.
Eight kilometers later, we emerged on the main street of Simcoe, and
met Paul and the van just before the landmark Norfolk War Memorial.
Many of Simcoe’s buildings along the main street appear to go back to
the early nineteenth century. Simcoe, the Norfolk County seat, is not
large, and we quickly passed out of town on our way north and into a
beautiful and prosperous agricultural land. Twenty years ago, virtually all
the land was tied up in tobacco production, but this appeared to be at
most 20 per cent of the land use, with fields of soybeans, cucumbers,
tomatoes, corn and ginseng now taking up the balance.
Pig Roast
Just north of Simcoe, we swung left on Regional 24, which led us up to
Bloomsburg, and the Baptist Church. By chance, Rev. Burr showed up
just as we were passing, and he held us up for a brief chat. He asked
me if we had noticed their sign advertising the Corn and Pork Roast
scheduled for the next day. He said that the pita were coming, and in my
tiredness I could only wonder for a moment if the foods of the Middle
East could really be that newsworthy here. He then said they were
going to be demonstrating, and I said, “Oh, you mean P.E.T.A. (People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)”.
To digress, my wife Dorothy and I came down the next day to the feast
and had a great time listening to live country music and eating sweet
corn two feet long and roast pork. There were no demonstrators, just P.
E.T.A. (People Eating Tasty Animals).
Human Roast
As we proceeded north from Bloomsburg, we came to the
aforementioned Waterford, and then angled on some country roads over
to Boston. At this stage, it was now midday, and after an unseasonably
cool summer were not prepared for the great heat and humidity we
encountered for the next four or five hours. At Boston, we turned more
directly north on Cockshutt Road, which turned out to be a much busier
road than Mount Pleasant, and we had to put up with incessant car and
truck traffic rushing and roaring by for the next several hours, with a
gravel shoulder with a bad camber. But in time, we reached the Grand
River, and, on the other side, the Hamilton Brantford Rail Trail. Now the
sun was sufficiently off the zenith to reduce the discomfort and we
started to make up some time.
Mohawk Chapel and Headed for Home
We stopped a little longer at the Royal Chapel, and Gord discovered a
plaque just west of Brantford on the wall of the underpass tunnel under
highway 53, which commemorated the founding of the village of
Cainsville above by black slaves brought here by the Six Nations
Mohawks and who were freed when slavery was abolished in the British
Empire in 1834. Bet you didn’t know that.
From there we moved quickly across the soybean and corn fields west of
Jerseyville, and then into the downhill portion leading into Hamilton.
After Jerseyville, it started getting darker, but the aura from the city
makes nighttime running possible here even without a flashlight. We
were delayed for a while when we reached the streets of West Hamilton
when Gord became sick, due to, we speculated, the effects of the heat
earlier in the day. However, he would not quit and, at 11:00 p.m., we all
arrived together back where we started a week ago on Burlington
Heights.
Conclusion
After all was said and done, Brock captured Detroit and we raised
$2,685.00 for the Church of the Ascension and $1,404.00 for the
Canadian Cancer Society. In four years, we’ve raised $9,505.00 for the
church and $11,115.00 for the Cancer Society, exceeding the $20,000.00
mark this year in total givings.
Eventually, the war that divided the American population more deeply
than the Vietnam War and had devastated Ontario from one end to the
other, came to an end. Unfortunately, the mission of the church is not at
an end, and cancer continues to ravage both Americans and Canadians.
So we’ll be back at it again next year, God willing.
Ed Alexander Burlington Heights, Ontario August 25, 2003
For a number of years, Ed Alexander and his
friends have made an interesting trek, retracing
the land portion of Brock's journey that took him
from York to glory at Fort Detroit. He uses it as a
chance to get out, explore a little history and raise
some money for some great causes.
By Ed Alexander
Fruits of the Conflict
To the tune of The Battle of New Orleans.
In 1812 we quickly deployed
along with General Brock
on over to Detroit.
We took along some Indians
and we took along some tack
And we caught the Yanks a napping
like at Michilimackinac.
We fired our cannon and the Yanks began a duckin
You couldn’t see as many
as you could a while afore.
We fired once more and
General Hull surrendered
Surrended all his army along with all his fort.
Ed Alexander's journey
On Saturday, August 2nd, 2003, Ed and his running partners Gord and
Trevor Harthun set out to cover the 100 kilometers of the land portion of
General Isaac Brock’s journey of August 7, 1812 to Detroit. Brock left
York (Toronto) on August 6, and sailed to Hamilton where there was a
major garrison. From thence he traveled by horse to Brant’s Ford, the
village of the Mohawks, and from there south to Port Dover, arriving on
August 8. Brock’s ill advised and suicidal expedition against a vastly
superior force at Detroit resulted in the miracle which became the spark
that preserved the land which became Canada.
And since they had three days to kill that weekend, they came back the
same way. The course started at the site of the fort at Hamilton,
travelled along the Hamilton Brantford rail trail which parallels Governor
Simcoe’s pioneer road as far as His Majesty’s Chapel of the Mohawks
and Kanata, a restored Mohawk village in Brantford. Crossing next the
Grand River, we followed the roads we believe followed the original trail
from Brant’s Ford to Port Dover.
This run was attempted on behalf of the Canadian Cancer Society to
raise funds for their ongoing work and for the Church of the Ascension in
downtown Hamilton.
Now in its fourth year, this fundraising effort had an added twist this
year. In consideration of a minimum donation of $100 per day to one of
the named charities, members of the public were invited to join the pair
on one or more days.
Mercifully, the war of 1812 did not last longer than it did, judging from
the poor quality of the music it produced. Unlike the American Civil War,
which produced such immortal songs as The Battle Hymn of he Republic,
When Johnny Comes Marching Home, Tenting on the Old Campground,
Just Before the Battle, Mother, We Are Coming Father Abraham, and
dozens more, none of the songs listed at any War of 1812 website is
familiar to anyone whosoever today, except for the Star Spangled
Banner. And only through blind prejudice could one prefer this over The
Battle Hymn of the Republic, or America the Beautiful (written in 1893).
The only other song that we associate with the War of 1812 was
actually written in 1959, the Battle of New Orleans, which one still
occasionally hears played on the radio. On the Canadian side, we have
the long forgotten:
The Bold Canadian
Come all ye bold Canadians,
I'd have you lend an ear
Unto a short ditty
Which will your spirits cheer,
Concerning an engagemen
We had at Detroit town,
The pride of those Yankee boys
So bravely we took down.
The Yankees did invade U.S.,
To kill and to destroy,
And to distress our country,
Our peace for to annoy,
Our countrymen were filled
With sorrow, grief and woe,
To think that they should fall
By such an unnatural foe.
Come all ye bold Canadians,
Enlisted in the cause,
To defend your country,
And to maintain your laws;
Being all united,
This is the song we'll sing:
Success onto Great Britain
And God save the King.
Trad., curren to 1812-1813.
Other than some pretty dreadful and forgettable music, the war
produced precious little else, and the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the
conflict on Christmas Eve, 1814, was based on the principle of s tatus
quo ante bellum, that is, that the geography should be returned to
exactly as it was before the outbreak of hostilities, with the British giving
Michilimackinac and Fort Niagara and other places back to the U.S., and
receiving western Ontario in return.
The Nature of the Conflict
Like all wars, as it progressed, the combat became more desperate and
increasingly involved the loss of civilian life and property, so thank
goodness they didn’t have all the rousing songs of the Civil War to
encourage them to prolong the mayhem and slaughter.
The bad stuff really sort of started when the Americans seized York
(present day Toronto) in April, 1813. The outnumbered British retreated
from the town, but not before lighting a long fuse to the large powder
magazine, which blew up just as the Americans arrived in force, killing
and wounding a considerable number of them (including the discoverer
of Pike’s Peak). In angry retaliation, the remaining U.S. troops burned
the Legislature, which was totally against the explicit rules of warfare
agreed upon by both sides at the outbreak of the war.
In December of the same year, American commander George McClure
burned the town of Newark on the Niagara River to the ground in the
middle of winter with less than a day’s notice to the inhabitants.
Despite quick and earnest apologies from the U.S. government, the U.S.
citizens living in the Chesapeake Bay area would later take the brunt of
the retaliation for this, as a massive British fleet roamed the Bay at will
in 1814, burning and looting as they pleased, including most of the
public buildings of Washington, D.C.
But generally, it was, by any standards of warfare since then, a pretty
tame affair, which may explain why it got such a bland name, instead of
something like The Napoleonic Wars, The Hundred Years War, The
French and Indian War, the War of Spanish Succession, or the like.
However, there was one fairly significant result which was basically
accomplished within seven weeks of the unilateral U.S. declaration of
war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812, and that was the preservation of
Canada under British control west of the province of Quebec. Some
scholars have speculated that, if not for the war, Ontario and points
west would more likely have been assimilated by the United States and
all agree that the majority of the population in Ontario would not have
been opposed to union – until they were invaded, that is, and a different
view of the U.S. and their form of government emerged.
The Cause of the Conflict
The ultimate cause of the war, however, rested with Napoleon, whose
conquest of Europe could only be countered by the huge 1,000 ship
British navy. This led to (1) huge profits for U.S. merchant vessels trading
with France despite the British blockade, and (2) subsequent
extraordinary demand for able seamen and the resulting quadrupling of
wages, and (3) the desertion of some 25-50,000 British sailors to the U.
S. merchant marine. In desperation, the British took to boarding U.S.
ships at sea and “impressing” these deserters or anyone that looked
like a deserter. This wasn’t easy, since everyone looked pretty much the
same and spoke the same language.
Rather than look at the ultimate cause of this situation, however, and
motivated by the huge profits of the Continental Trade, the U.S. sought
to end this practice of impressment by declaring war on Britain, which
was pretty well tied up with Napoleon in Spain at that time. Due to the
length of time it took to communicate across the Atlantic, the U.S. did not
learn that the British had on June 16 cancelled the Orders in Council
which had sought rather unsuccessfully to restrict U.S. trade with France.
Upon learning of this, U.S. President James Madison immediately
commissioned a peace delegation to Europe and proposed a cease fire
to Governor General Prevost in Montreal. Prevost may have been
momentarily fooled, but General Brock was not, as Madison did nothing
to slow the advance of U.S. forces towards the Canadian border on all
fronts.
Other forces were at work in the U.S.. Many, including the President,
saw the possibility of seizing all of Canada as a real bonus to the conflict
over international trade rules. Former President Thomas Jefferson even
mused that the capture of Canada would be “a mere matter of
marching.” Talk about bad karma: it was President Jefferson’s policies of
“reduce the deficit at all costs” that had left the U.S. with a military
unable to prosecute a war against Canada. He went bankrupt during
the war when the British blockade of the U.S. Atlantic coast caused the
collapse of the southern U.S. agricultural industry.
Situation Report
Nonetheless, the U.S. was a nation of some eight million persons, while
in all of Canada between the Detroit River and Halifax harbour, there
were only some 500,000 inhabitants, and perhaps only some 30,000 in
all of Ontario. In charge of both the political and military operations in
this province was General Isaac Brock.
Born and raised on the small island of Guernsey in the English Channel,
Brock had but 1,500 regular British troops with which to defend a border
close to 1,000 miles in length between Kingston and Detroit. Displaying
great astuteness developed over ten years in the country, Brock defied
what would appear to be insurmountable odds against him, correctly
anticipated the American plan to defeat the British interests in Canada,
and had in place the perfect plan to completely thwart it.
Brock correctly predicted that the Americans would launch a three
pronged assault against Canada, one force marching against Montreal,
another attacking across the Niagara River, and the third approaching
from the west across the Detroit River. Brock knew that the Americans
would not have a force that could in any way seriously threaten the
major British garrison at Montreal for a long time to come, and his
informants in the Niagara frontier reported that U.S. forces there were
woefully untrained and would not be in any condition of strength to
launch an assault across the River for several months to come.
This left him enough time to deal with his right flank on the Detroit River
where U.S. War of Independence hero General William Hull had led an
invasion from Detroit across the river in mid July and was threatening
the British garrison at Fort Malden.
Brock Swings Into Action
Upon learning of the American declaration of war, Brock immediately put
his plan into action. First, he dispatched a force of British regulars and
natives from St. Joseph Island to seize Michilimackinac (pronounced,
despite my lyrics above, Michilimacki naw). Since the U.S. government
neglected to inform this remote but crucial outpost of the
commencement of hostilities, the forces there were completely
unprepared and handed over the keys without firing a shot. This
immediately encouraged the native tribes who were gathering under the
leadership of the great leader Tecumseh, who saw in any British victory
a chance to preserve their lands against the encroachment of the
Americans into lands granted to them south of the Great Lakes.
Brock Leaves For Port Dover
At York at the end of July, Brock called out the militia and ordered 100 of
them on to Port Dover, where they were joined by forces diverted from
Niagara and militia raised locally by the dictatorial founder of the local
settlement, Colonel Talbot. Brock met with the provincial Assembly in
York to get their backing for defense efforts and funding. But as they
seemed more interested in debating a school bill, on August 5th, he
prorogued (dismissed) the Assembly and sailed that evening along the
shore of Lake Ontario to Burlington Bay at the far western end of the
Lake. Here Brock had some years ago established a major garrison near
the property of local fur trader Richard Beasley overlooking the Bay. In
retracing Brock’s footsteps to Port Dover, we can speculate that he
quartered for the night in Beasley’s home, the foundations of which are
now under Dundurn Castle.
Evidence of his Route
Very little else remains of the record of his trip, except that he reportedly
stopped at the Mohawk Village on the Grand River, probably arriving
there on the evening of the 6th, and leaving the next day for Port Dover
after holding council with the Six Nations, according to one source, to
solicit their support. Another source has him arriving in Port Dover on
Lake Erie on August 8, about forty miles south of the Ford. It is fairly
certain that Brock would have traveled from Burlington Heights to the
Mohawk Village at Brant’s Ford along Governor Simcoe’s Road, which
was laid out in the 1780’s as a road to open up the interior of the
province to settlement, and crossed the Grand River near Paris on its
way to St. Thomas and London.
At Brantford, I looked on the map for roads south from there that were
not straight, indicating a more primitive origin. This led to a foray by car
along several options, all leading through Waterford. At this small town,
I discovered an historical plaque placing the foundation of this
settlement on Nanticoke Creek in 1790. It looked like this was the right
way, since a forty mile trip by horse in a day and a half would not leave
any time for foraging, and Sovereign’s Mills, as the town was then
known, had a mill. South of Waterford lies the hamlet of Bloomsburg.
This consists of but a few houses and a Baptist Church.
I stopped to look in the ancient cemetery for the dates on the oldest
markers, but was sidetracked by a man mowing the grass who looked
old enough to actually know something worth knowing. He and I were
joined shortly by the pastor of this brick country church built in 1850,
Rev. Allan Burr. They didn’t know the date of the first burial, but when
asked, quickly affirmed that this was the road traveled by Brock. The war
would visit this area several more times during the conflict, in
devastating and 2 destructive raids by American forces, and I suspected
that there was an inherited memory of those years among many in the
area.
From there the trail goes cold, but it made sense to follow the road
south from Bloomsburg to Simcoe from whence there’s a five mile long
footpath along an abandoned rail line along the Lynn River to Port
Dover. If not the actual course Brock followed, at least it would more
closely emulate the environment he encountered along his way than the
miles and miles of paved road we’d be forced to travel.
Brock Arrives at Port Dover
When Brock arrived at Port Dover, he was met by the 200 odd militia
raised there by Colonel Talbot, in addition to the 100 sent there earlier
by Brock from York, as well as the 60 regular troops from Niagara, plus a
whole flotilla of leaky boats borrowed from the local populace of farmers
and fishermen. This small armada then endured 200 miles of horrible
weather on the lake without respite for five days before arriving at the
mouth of the Detroit River at midnight on August 13.
The Capture of Detroit
Once there, Brock learned that General Hull, unnerved by the easy
capitulation of Michilimackinac and news of the approaching confluence
of Brock and the great Shawnee Chief Tecumseh in his front yard, had
retreated back to U.S. territory. His supply lines to Ohio were now
seriously threatened, and he was contemplating abandoning Detroit.
Hull made the mistake of committing his fears to paper, and these fell
into the hands of Brock when the U.S. ship Cuyahoga Packet was
captured by the British fleet which dominated Lake Erie, further
emboldening his British adversary. Nonetheless, Hull retained the upper
hand. He had possession of a fort that in no way could be taken by the
force available to Brock. Hull also outnumbered Brock 2,500 to 1,000
troops, and would undoubtedly have defeated him if he had cared to
venture outside his bastion.
Aftermath
The rest is history. William Hull, whose nephew Isaac Hull became one of
the greatest heroes of the war as the commander of the frigate The
Constitution, would himself face a court martial and would spend the
rest of his long life trying to clear his name. Brock would go on to
immortal fame, and go there quickly. Returning immediately to the
Niagara frontier to meet the threat there, Brock was killed leading his old
regiment, the 49th, against the Americans who had crossed the River at
Queenston on October 13. Brock’s genius and panache had united a
province and filled it with a grim determination. One hundred years later,
Brock’s investment would pay off for the Mother Country, as some
600,000 young Canadians would cross the ocean in response to her
need, and more than 60,000 of these would never return.
But battles are but a miniscule part of the life of war. Far greater time
and effort go into achieving position and maintaining it. The life of the
common soldier usually involves months and months of incredible
hardship and deprivation, exposure to all the extremes of climate
involved living out of doors. Until the 20th century, the major cause of
death for soldiers was not battlefield wounds, but disease, and when
the day of battle was upon them typically only 75-80% were among the
“effectives” fit for duty. The battle for Detroit only lasted a day – but
what was it like getting there?
Brock’s Steps Retraced
It was against this historical background that Gord and son Trevor
Harthun and myself decided to retrace the land portion of Brock’s
journey to Detroit, between Hamilton and Port Dover. The goal of Brock’s
brave venture was to save British North American from the corruption of
Republicanism and keep it safe in the bosom of the Empire. Our goals,
perhaps more modest, were to revisit and discover as much as possible
of the historical route he took, and, once again, to raise money from our
suffering for the Church of the Ascension and the Canadian Cancer
Society. With this in mind, on the morning of August 2, 2003, the three of
us set out from the site of the garrison on Burlington Heights, and
proceeded by foot along the rail tracks which lead out towards West
Hamilton and Dundas, and onto the Hamilton Brantford Rail Trail.
This trail runs roughly parallel to Governor Simcoe’s original route to
Paris and the west, and more closely approximates the environment of
that time than does the current asphalt highway. We’d traveled this way
dozens of times in the past, including on our first fundraiser in 2000.
Assisted once again by friend Paul Westerhof driving the aid van, we
progressed along this fine gravel pathway gradually uphill to Jerseyville,
then further along to Brantford during which time we experienced an
hour or two of very heavy rain. We passed the only remaining structure
of the Mohawk Village, His Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks, built
in 1784 as a gift to replace the Royal Chapel they lost in New York state
when they were forced out following the American War of Independence.
South from Brantford
A few miles further along the trail, we came to the site of Brant’s Ford in
downtown Brantford, but eschewed the fording and took the long bridge
over and turned on to Mount Pleasant Road, a winding, rolling and
pleasant paved road that passes not far from the Alexander Graham Bell
homestead. The environment quickly changes to countryside and in
another hour, we approached the hamlet of Oakland from the east.
Malcolm’s Mills
As did General Duncan MacArthur on a day in November of 1814 with
800 mounted soldiers. Having undertaken an excursion of destruction
from Detroit against the citizens of southwestern Ontario, but thwarted
by high water at Brant’s Ford from ravaging the countryside around
Hamilton, he and his party were intent to proceed to south Port Dover to
burn it to the ground for the second time that year. At Malcolm’s Mills, as
Oakland was known then, he was challenged by a much smaller force of
Canadian militiamen, whom he routed in short order. This marks the last
battle fought on Canadian soil against the invading army of a foreign
nation. Our goal was to accomplish the 72 kilometers to Waterford this
day, but our progress had been slowed by the rain and now Gord and I
both had some resultant blisters. Thus we called it a day at 65
kilometers an hour south of Oakland at Wilsonville, and vowed to get in
a full 80 km the following day.
The Journey Interrupted
Sunday came, and we were unable to get Paul out of bed, so the three
of us ran a 40 km loop of the Bruce Trail, during which we all resolved to
come back the following Saturday and run the entire way from Port
Dover to Hamilton, 100 kilometers, in one day.
Our Pilgrimage Continued
Saturday, August 9th, came right on schedule, as did Paul Westerhof,
and we all set off to Port Dover. Once there, we got underway by
around 6:00 a.m. from the beach of this lovely tourist and fishing village
on Lake Erie. We found no trace of the original village, which follows
from the fact that it was burned not once but twice during 1814 by
marauding American troops. A quick right on Main Street and a mile
along the sidewalk took us to the entrance to the Lynn Valley Rail Trail.
This is a lovely and tame path that crosses and recrosses the Lynn River
more times than you’d care to count over the original railway bridges.
Eight kilometers later, we emerged on the main street of Simcoe, and
met Paul and the van just before the landmark Norfolk War Memorial.
Many of Simcoe’s buildings along the main street appear to go back to
the early nineteenth century. Simcoe, the Norfolk County seat, is not
large, and we quickly passed out of town on our way north and into a
beautiful and prosperous agricultural land. Twenty years ago, virtually all
the land was tied up in tobacco production, but this appeared to be at
most 20 per cent of the land use, with fields of soybeans, cucumbers,
tomatoes, corn and ginseng now taking up the balance.
Pig Roast
Just north of Simcoe, we swung left on Regional 24, which led us up to
Bloomsburg, and the Baptist Church. By chance, Rev. Burr showed up
just as we were passing, and he held us up for a brief chat. He asked
me if we had noticed their sign advertising the Corn and Pork Roast
scheduled for the next day. He said that the pita were coming, and in my
tiredness I could only wonder for a moment if the foods of the Middle
East could really be that newsworthy here. He then said they were
going to be demonstrating, and I said, “Oh, you mean P.E.T.A. (People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)”.
To digress, my wife Dorothy and I came down the next day to the feast
and had a great time listening to live country music and eating sweet
corn two feet long and roast pork. There were no demonstrators, just P.
E.T.A. (People Eating Tasty Animals).
Human Roast
As we proceeded north from Bloomsburg, we came to the
aforementioned Waterford, and then angled on some country roads over
to Boston. At this stage, it was now midday, and after an unseasonably
cool summer were not prepared for the great heat and humidity we
encountered for the next four or five hours. At Boston, we turned more
directly north on Cockshutt Road, which turned out to be a much busier
road than Mount Pleasant, and we had to put up with incessant car and
truck traffic rushing and roaring by for the next several hours, with a
gravel shoulder with a bad camber. But in time, we reached the Grand
River, and, on the other side, the Hamilton Brantford Rail Trail. Now the
sun was sufficiently off the zenith to reduce the discomfort and we
started to make up some time.
Mohawk Chapel and Headed for Home
We stopped a little longer at the Royal Chapel, and Gord discovered a
plaque just west of Brantford on the wall of the underpass tunnel under
highway 53, which commemorated the founding of the village of
Cainsville above by black slaves brought here by the Six Nations
Mohawks and who were freed when slavery was abolished in the British
Empire in 1834. Bet you didn’t know that.
From there we moved quickly across the soybean and corn fields west of
Jerseyville, and then into the downhill portion leading into Hamilton.
After Jerseyville, it started getting darker, but the aura from the city
makes nighttime running possible here even without a flashlight. We
were delayed for a while when we reached the streets of West Hamilton
when Gord became sick, due to, we speculated, the effects of the heat
earlier in the day. However, he would not quit and, at 11:00 p.m., we all
arrived together back where we started a week ago on Burlington
Heights.
Conclusion
After all was said and done, Brock captured Detroit and we raised
$2,685.00 for the Church of the Ascension and $1,404.00 for the
Canadian Cancer Society. In four years, we’ve raised $9,505.00 for the
church and $11,115.00 for the Cancer Society, exceeding the $20,000.00
mark this year in total givings.
Eventually, the war that divided the American population more deeply
than the Vietnam War and had devastated Ontario from one end to the
other, came to an end. Unfortunately, the mission of the church is not at
an end, and cancer continues to ravage both Americans and Canadians.
So we’ll be back at it again next year, God willing.
Ed Alexander Burlington Heights, Ontario August 25, 2003
