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George Sheppard, Canadian Historian
Further Reading
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What it was like for a British soldier arriving in Upper Canada in 1812Question: It must have been a fair shock for a British soldier to arrive and find, not only the rations, but the black flies and the mosquitoes.George: I think even static electricity is a shock to most people who come from Britain. They've got such a damp climate and that, and you often read accounts in British soldiers, they say, "Oh, you know, I took my sweater off last night" or something, "and I thought they were fireflies", you know. So it's a drier climate, so for the first time they have static electricity, so it's a completely different place. So you can imagine, you're in a climate where in the summer it's 100 Fahrenheit, and in the winter it's sometimes 40 below. And they're not wearing the clothes that soldiers would wear nowadays, you know, the parkas and that sort of stuff. That doesn't exist. They're wearing woolen clothes, gaiters and that sort of stuff, leather boots and - it would have been a very difficult place to fight in. And the food itself was awful, for the most part. When you read about their - when they're out on campaign, they open the barrels and it's tainted beef or whatever, and mostly heads, and then they draw lots to who gets that. Or you get a loaf of bread and it has to last you for four days or something. You can imagine, it was a pretty tough place to campaign. And then aside from that, you just can't go to the local supermarket and supplement your diet. So there was a lot of theft and a lot of hunger when you were out on campaign. I think here in the garrison, for example, at Fort York, food was pretty good and guys who were in garrison apparently had to let out the seams on their clothes. But when you were on campaign, this was a very, very tough place to be. |
