MEMORIALS ACROSS NORTH AMERICA HAVE BECOME CONTROVERSIAL AS OPINIONS EVOLVE, BUT A NEW ONE IN ONTARIO HONOURS THE CANADIANS WHO DIED IN THE U.S. CIVIL WAR — BELIEVED TO HAVE TOTALLED 7,000.
CIVIL WAR MONUMENT UNVEILED IN ONTARIO
While Civil War memorials may not be the most popular things lately, the world’s newest monument to the American Civil War has just opened in Canada.
The granite obelisk is Canada’s only monument to the 1860s conflict and honours more than 40,000 Civil War soldiers who hailed from what would become modern-day Canada.
“At the time, there were as many in the (Canadian) military as volunteered to fight in the Civil War,” said Bob McLachlan, president of the Grays and Blues of Montreal, a Quebec-based Civil War reenactment group involved with the monument’s creation.
Approximately 7,000 Canadians are believed to have died in the war. This means to this day the Civil War killed more Canadians than any other conflict except the two world wars.
For context, 26,000 Canadian troops fought in the Korean War and more than 500 were killed. In the 12 years of Canada’s deployment to Afghanistan, a total of 40,000 served and 159 have been killed.
The monument honours Canadians who took up arms on both sides of the war, which pitted the United States against the Confederate States of America, a breakaway region of 11 southern states. It was unveiled Saturday at a historical village outside Cornwall, Ont.
Although Canada would not exist as an independent country until 1867, its various colonial governments followed Britain’s example of staying officially neutral during the war.
However, American ranks soon swelled with Canadians already living in U.S. territory or supporters who trekked south to enlist.
The volunteers included O Canada composer Calixa Lavallée, who was wounded at the Battle of Antietam.
John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, was cornered and killed by a cavalry regiment led by Canadian Edward Doherty.
When Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to his Union counterpart Ulysses S. Grant, one of the witnesses was a Quebecborn blacksmith in Grant’s personal guard.
One of the most wellknown Canadian Civil War veterans is Sarah Edmonds, a New Brunswick woman who disguised herself as a man in order to join Union forces and then became a spy behind Confederate lines.
The conflict also saw 29 Canadian soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor, the United State’s highest military decoration.
One citation credits 18-year-old Frank Bois with staying cool while Confederate shellfire tore apart his ship, the USS Cincinnati. Then after noticing all the ship’s flagpoles had been shot away, Bois quickly lashed up a new flag “to enable this proud ship to go down with her colours.”
The majority of Canadians in Civil War uniform fought for the North. The Grays and Blues of Montreal estimates of the 40,000 Canadians, only 4,000 fought for the Confederacy.
However, Canadian public opinion at the time was surprisingly supportive for the South, which had seceded in large part to protect the institution of slavery.
Although the British Empire had spearheaded global efforts to abolish African slavery, Canada nevertheless identified with the South as a fellow agrarian country facing an invasion from the United States — a situation Canada had twice endured in the previous century.