A woman of courage

Do you know the story of Laura Secord? She rose to a difficult challenge with both courage and determination. Hers is a curious story, and I find it valuable both for the things I like about it and for the things I don’t.

If you’ve never heard of her, or you’re a Canadian who only associates her with a brand of chocolate (with which, incidentally, she had nothing to do), don’t worry. I certainly knew nothing about her until I started work on episode 90 of my podcast, A History of England, due to go out on Sunday. It deals with the War of 1812, which very few people know anything about, and even fewer care.

It was one of those completely senseless wars, where nobody gained anything from the other side (although the Americans did end up putting an end to any organised Native American resistance to their westward expansion, so as far as those two were concerned, there was a clear winner and a catastrophic loser).

It was the second and last war between Britain and the United States. So far, at any rate. Neither the British nor the Americans did well in trying to capture territory from the other side, which in the Americans’ case meant in Canada. Both did, however, develop quite a remarkable line in burning each other’s towns and cities. 

Among other places, the Americans burned York in Canada, a town which later grew (a lot) to become today’s Toronto. 

Among the many such depredations by the British, the most notorious was the burning of Washington. The soldiers took over what was then called the Executive Mansion, apparently eating the dinner that had been prepared for the US President (James Madison, since you ask) and then torching the place. When rebuilt, it was also repainted in a colour I leave you to work out, from the new name of the building, the White House.

One of the less significant attacks on a town was the American assault on Queenston, on what’s known as the Niagara peninsula, between Canada and America. That’s where Laura Secord lived.

She was the daughter of an American immigrant from Massachusetts, and she’d married a local man. He was wounded in the fighting to defend the town, and the story has it that she intervened with two American soldiers who were intent on beating the injured man to death. This story, however, is questioned these days, and may have been an embellishment by a grandson of hers, especially the part of the account where he claims she begged the soldiers to kill her instead.

Either way, when she got home, she found it had been systematically looted.

American officers were then billeted on her, so she had to provide them with bed and board for as long as they stayed there.

Whether it was from overhearing their conversation or in some other way, she learned of a planned American attack on a British encampment at a place called Beaver Dams. So she set out to walk the twenty miles on unfamiliar paths through dense woods to warn the British. Before she got there, she stumbled on a group of Mohawks who guided her the rest of the way.

Laura Secord guided by Mohawks
A somewhat romanticised view from a lot later...

The British may also have been warned by their ‘Indian’ – i.e. Native American – allies. In any case, they were ready for the attack when it came and were able to score a decisive victory over a superior American force.

Not a bad story, right?

What I don’t like about it is that back in 2012, the then Conservative government of Canada decided to make a big deal of the War of 1812. Even among Canadians, few have heard of it and still fewer care. But Stephen Harper’s government wanted to forge a new identity for the country, and identity for so many on the right, means something manly and warlike.

Secord only represented a small part of that story, as the government told it. She was little more than a footnote alongside just one other woman they chose to include. And she was very much the supporting player. She, the loving wife who tended her husband’s injuries, walked to the British, only because her husband was wounded, with the implication that he would have gone instead if he could have. 

What’s more, it feels distinctly artificial to make this a kind of foundation myth for Canada. There were certainly many Canadians fighting the American invaders, and many French Canadians were among them. But they weren’t fighting for Canada, which wouldn’t be invented for several decades yet, they were fighting for Britain, in British units, wearing British uniforms, under British command. 

If they fought against an invasion, they certainly weren’t fighting for independence, but for the right to remain a British colony.

What I do like about the story is what it says about people storming into someone else’s country without knocking. Thomas Jefferson, famed as the main drafter of the American Declaration of Independence, and the third President of the United States, reckoned that all the US army had to do was march, to take control of Canada. The local population would welcome the Americans as liberators and rush to their side.

Well, no, that didn’t happen. Laura Secord had seen her home looted by her so-called liberators. And that pushed her to undertake a difficult and dangerous task, which she successfully accomplished, against them. 

At Beaver Dams, as in most battles in that war, it was the defending side that won. People fight harder when they’re protecting their homes than when they’re attacking someone else’s. That makes them far more difficult to overcome.

What a pity Vladimir Putin wasn’t aware of that before he launched his ill-advised ‘special operation’ against Ukraine. It turns out that there are a lot of Laura Secords in that country. Amongst the men as well as the women.