Index of Historians

Who got credited for saving Upper Canada in the War of 1812

A group called the Loyal and Patriotic Society was started here in Toronto in 1812. It was designed to help people who were hard done by in the war, widows and orphans and that sort of stuff, but also to reward meritorious conduct. Part of its aim was to hand out medals at the end of the war.

So the war ends and they send out circulars asking, "Who do you have that's really great", and they only get a partial response, but they get 147 names. Now out of the 147 names, none of the people who founded the Loyal and Patriotic Society are included. So they strike another committee to examine the issue, and they decide that they'll order extra medals, put their own names in, and they'll go around handing them out eventually. It then becomes tied up in a very complicated series of shenanigans.

They produced around 600 medals in England, brought them back here and realised they had a problem. Some members of the York elite, the people who started the Loyal and Patriotic Society, people like John Strachan and John Beverly Robinson wished to get these medals. Now that would have probably incited jealousy in others who thought that they had done a much bigger job in the war than John Strachan or John Beverly Robinson, who only served for a few months.

So they put the medals in the vault of the Bank of Upper Canada here in Toronto, where they stayed from the 1820's up to the 1840's. After the 1837 Rebellion, when the assembly here no longer reflects only the desires of the Toronto elite, they hold a commission to investigate what happened to the medals, and they find out that they still exist. So they make a decision that they want those medals distributed by the Loyal and Patriotic Society.

So the Loyal and Patriotic Society holds a last meeting and decides to destroy the medals so they don't fall into what they called "unworthy hands". So they carted the medals to the backyard of William Allen, one of the members of the York mercantile elite. A smithy had been set up and a blacksmith hired to smash each medal individually so that they couldn't be used

What's really sad is that the people who actually stood out in a tremendous way (because the vast majority of the males here never served at all), had their memories taken away. They were robbed. Canadians don't know about those people. There is no monument in Ottawa. There's no list of the 147 heroes. Instead you will find books about John Strachan who, as the fighting bishop, which he wasn't at that time, who saved York from wholesale burning, which he didn't do. It's a sad thing in Canadian history that that section of our past has been taken from us.