[URBAN NOTE] "Attempting to Remember the War of 1812"

[rfmcdonald]

The weekend before last, Torontoist's Ross Fair blogged about an effort to celebrate the centenary of the War of 1812 with a statue in Toronto. In the end, all that developed was a plaque on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

On May 25, 1909, some 200 men gathered at the University Avenue Armouries to march north to Queen’s Park. There, veterans of the 1866 Fenian Raids, the 1885 North-West Rebellion, and the 1899-1902 South African War decorated their respective monuments to honour the fallen. Afterwards, the men regrouped at the front steps of the legislature for speeches. Lieutenant-Colonel William Hamilton Merritt, a veteran of both the North-West Rebellion and the South African War, reminded the crowd that Queen’s Park had no monument “to the brave men who saved Canada in 1812 to 1814 and who laid deep and strong the foundation stone of this great Dominion.”

More than 100 years later, that is still the case.

In his speech, Merritt said that centennial commemorations of the war were being organized, and that it was “no secret” that Ontario’s premier, Sir James Pliny Whitney, “was in sympathy with the idea of erecting a suitable monument.” Shortly after, Toronto’s Army and Navy Veterans Association wrote to the Globe to remind Merritt and Torontonians that the city already had a memorial to those who had fought in the War of 1812.

It had little effect. Merritt would continue to campaign for a monument at Queen’s Park doggedly.

The monument to which the letter-writers referred was Walter Allward’s sculpture of the “Old Soldier,” unveiled in January 1907 at the centre of Toronto’s old military burial ground (now called Victoria Memorial Square). Bronze plaques affixed to each of the pedestal’s four sides honoured those who gave their lives in the War of 1812; the monument also honoured the British soldiers who had died while stationed in Upper Canada and were buried at that location.

Had Merritt listened, that letter might have spared him some harsh lessons, learned in the course of a years’ long campaign. The Victoria Square monument had cost just $4,000, but it had taken five years to complete partly because of delays in fundraising. (Some $200 remained outstanding when it was unveiled in 1907.) And Merritt’s ambitions were much greater.

Planning for War of 1812 centennial commemorations began in the summer of 1909, with two Toronto-based organizations emerging to arrange events that would be both spectacular and national in scope. A provisional committee of “The Centenary Celebration Association 1812-1912″ organized a public meeting at City Hall in December 1910 to discuss plans for a grand historical pageant, a national monument, and an invitation for King George V to visit Canada. But grand ambitions did not yield well-organized plans: the Toronto Daily Star dubbed it “A Peaceful But Tangled Meeting.”