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George Sheppard, Canadian Historian
Further Reading |
The American burning of Niagara-on-the-LakeAnd the Americans do start to do some fairly nasty things starting in 1813. The first they do is here in Toronto, they burn the parliament buildings. Not long after that, in December, they burn the whole town of Niagara-on-the-Lake right to the ground. And that was against what the Americans had said they were going to do. They promised protection for property and everything. Nonetheless, they burned the whole place and mostly women and children were left behind in December in Canada, and the Americans retreated back across the river. In May of the next year, they attacked Dover, and this sort of pattern of fire raids occurred throughout 1813, 1914. And the British retaliated. They burned Buffalo, and along the shore of the Niagara River on the American side, and they also - a British invasion fleet sailed for the White House and burned that as well. So it became a far less gentlemanly war as time went on. It became a nasty affair. That said, still not tremendous numbers of lives lost compared to European battles. But it scarred the infrastructure here, it made people think about war in a different way. It was no longer this lark it was at the beginning. It became a serious thing |
