Warrior F. Onondeyoh Loft, Six Nation Indians, Toronto 71   Members of Committee at Queenston Heights 77   Group of Indians (Grand River Reserve) celebrating Brock's Centenary at Queenston Heights 88   Captain Joseph Birnie 93

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INTRODUCTION

BROCK AND QUEENSTON
By John Stewart Carstairs, B.A., Toronto

Brock's fame and Brock's name will never die in our history. The past one hundred years have settled that. And in this glory the craggy heights of Queenston, where in their splendid mausoleum Brock and Macdonell sleep side by side their last sleep, will always have its share. Strangely enough, who ever associates Brock's name with Detroit? Yet, here was a marvellous achievement: the left wing of the enemy's army annihilated, its eloquent and grandiose leader captured and two thousand five hundred men and abundant military stores, with the State of Michigan thrown in!

But Britain in those days was so busy doing things that we a hundred years later can scarcely realize them. However, so much of our historic perspective has been settled during the past hundred years. Perhaps in another hundred years, when other generations come together to commemorate the efforts of these men that with Brock and Macdonell strove to seek and find and do and not to yield, the skirmish at Queenston may be viewed in a different light.

Perhaps then the British Constitution will have bridged the oceans and the "Seven Seas"; perhaps then Canada will be more British than Britain itself—the very core, the centre, the heart of the Empire in territory and population, in wealth and in influence, in spirit and in vital activities. Then Queenston Heights may be regarded not merely as a victory that encouraged Canadians to fight for their homes but as a far-reaching world-event.

The year of Queenston, let us remember, was the year of Salamanca and of Moscow—the most glorious year in British military annals. But what has Salamanca to do with Canada? Britain was fighting alone, not merely for the freedom of Britons but for the freedom of Europe. Since 1688 she had been for more than one-half of the one hundred and twenty-four years actively in arms against France. Since 1793 there had been peace—and only nominal peace—against France for only the two years following the Treaty of Amiens (1801). The generation approaching maturity in 1812 had been born and had grown up "in wars and rumours of wars." In this struggle against France and later against Napoleon, the Motherland had increased the National Debt by £500,000,000, or nearly twenty-five hundred millions of dollars; she had spent every cent she could gather and taxed her posterity to this extent. That is what Britain had done for her children—and for the world at large!

But ever since Jefferson had purchased (1803) Louisiana from Napoleon the United States had found she was less dependent on Britain. Accordingly, Jefferson grew more and more unfriendly. And now in 1812, the world campaign of Napoleon had spread to America. He had hoped for this, but on different lines. He had planned for it, but those plans had failed.

"The War of 1812-14," as we call it, was merely a phase, a section, of the greatest struggle in the history of mankind—the struggle of Britain against the aggrandisement and cheap ambition of Napoleon to become the Dictator of Europe and the civilized world. Brock, though invited to take a share in the long drawn out contest in Spain, decided—fortunately for us—to remain in Canada.

The year 1812 was the climax of the war with Napoleon—the most splendid, as we have said, of all years in British military annals. Since 1808, the British forces had been striving to drive the French from Spain. First under Sir John Moore, later under Wellington, inch by inch, year by year, they had beaten them back toward the Pyrenees. Then on July 22, 1812, just as Brock was struggling with all his difficulties here in Canada, there came Wellington's first decisive victory at Salamanca. The news reached Brock in October and a day or two before he died he sent the tidings forward to Proctor—Proctor then struggling with his Forty-first Regiment to do as much damage as he could to the enemy hundreds of miles out from Windsor and Detroit, Proctor who was to be eternally much abused for faults he never was guilty of, and to be blamed for Tecumseh's death next year. With the news of Salamanca went Brock's prophetic comment: "I think the game nearly up in Spain"; and within a year the game, Napoleon's game, was up, not only in Spain but in all Europe. Within a year Leipsic had been fought and won and Napoleon was a wanderer on the face of the earth, to be gathered in and lodged on Elba.

Meanwhile other great events were shaping. Just a month before Salamanca—in fact, four days before the United States declared war—Napoleon had set out on his fatal expedition against Russia. Two days later he crossed the Niemen. More than a million Frenchmen were now in arms in Europe; and Britain was the only active enemy in the field.

What wonder then that Brock, as the civil and military head of the Government of Upper Canada, should view with extreme anxiety the situation in the Province? He had been in Canada for ten years. He knew that the Motherland could not furnish any more men. There were fifteen hundred regular troops in Upper, and two thousand in Lower Canada. Forty years before there had not been a single settlement in what is now Ontario from the Detroit to the Ottawa, from Lake Ontario to Sault Ste. Marie. Now there were seventy-five thousand inhabitants; and under a wise Militia Act they had imposed yearly military service on themselves; every male inhabitant had to furnish his own gun and appear on parade or be heavily fined. Thus there was a volunteer force more or less trained amounting to about ten thousand men—a militia that under Brock rendered splendid service.

But arms were scarce and supplies had to be brought long distances. The men at Queenston won their victory with guns that were captured two months before at Detroit. Throughout the war, when our mills had been burnt by a ruthless enemy that made war on women and children and old men, supplies were brought up the toilsome course of the St. Lawrence in Durham boats and bateaux. The devoted militia of the river counties guarded the frontier, and only once did they lose a convoy, part of which they afterwards recovered by a raid into the enemy's territory at Waddington, N.Y.

In front of Brock was a nation of eight or nine millions, a nation that believed they could "take the Canadas without soldiers;" as the United States Secretary of War said—"we have only to send officers into the Province and the people, disaffected towards their own Government, will rally round our standard." Yet they placed, during the three years of the war, 527,000 men in the field and were defeated in thirty-two