AN attempt by the US to invade Canada was driven back at Detroit on August 16th, 1812, and at Queenston Heights on October 13th, a humbling met with outrage in Washington and exasperation in New England, which never supported the war.* The Americans raided the capital of Upper Canada, York, on April 27, 1813, looting and burning public buildings;* but Montreal withstood them and by July 1814 the Canadians, French and British together, had driven the Americans out.* A British raid subsequently gave Washington a taste of her own medicine by torching her public buildings, including the White House, but Baltimore escaped after a successful defence of Fort McHenry on September 15th, 1814, immortalised in the song ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.
After Napoleon abdicated on April 6th, 1814 tensions eased, and on December 24th, days after a British push towards New Orleans was repulsed, the war ended with the Treaty of Ghent. The matter of the Canadian border was resolved at last by the Oregon Treaty of 1846.*
Queenston is now a suburb of Hamilton, Ontario. See A map showing some of the key battlesites of the War of 1812.
The settlement at York was founded in 1793 at a place known locally as Toronto, and subsequently made capital of Upper Canada. It reverted to its original name on March 6th, 1834, and remains the capital of the Province of Ontario to this day. Upper Canada was an area hugging the northern end of the Great Lakes; Lower Canada lay to its northeast, stretching to the Atlantic coast and largely occupied today by the Province of Quebec.
The French tended to support the British because the USA was perceived as anti-Catholic. Several native American and Canadian communities also supported the British, and some of the escaped American slaves whom the Royal Navy assisted in reaching freedom in Canada immediately enlisted in the British armed forces. The son of one couple, William Hall, became the first black recipient of the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the India Mutiny of 1857.
Not without some tensions, which in the case of The Pig-and-Potato War of 1859 arose from the most innocuous of causes.