When Civil War vets invaded Canada
A framed lithograph of the Battle of Ridgeway hangs over the mantle of the stone fireplace in our cottage on Lake Erie’s Canadian shore. Redcoats take aim at green-clad soldiers; puffs of smoke rise from their rifles. I studied that reproduction for hours as a boy: Combat looks romantic when you’re 12.
There was an incongruity in that image that middle-school me could never resolve. The men in green were Irish American, like my family. So why did I always feel emotionally aligned with Canada’s redcoats?
The battleground is near the Fort Erie, Ontario, lakefront where my multitudinous Buffalo clan spent summers. I realize now that love of inland sea meant boyhood’s inner maple leaf trumped its inner shamrock.
Next week is the 150th anniversary of a battle few Americans know.
Visitors to our cousin-shared cottage often ask what the heck is going on in the prominently placed picture.
I’ve got a shorthand, comicopera version I often tell that goes something like this:
In 1866, a ragtag assemblage of Irish-American Civil War vets amassed along the border in Buffalo. They got drunk one night and rowed across the Niagara River to invade Canada, intending to conquer it, so they could trade it to Britain for Ireland’s freedom. These so-called Fenians won the battle but lost the war and soon were rousted back to Buffalo.
Recently, I called Peter Vronsky, who teaches history at Ryerson University in Toronto, to get the real story. He is the author of Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion and the 1866 Battle That Made Canada. Sure enough, my oversimplified yarn is wrong in several key respects — history’s jagged edges smoothed out over time, like rocks in the river.
“You’re close, but the Fenians were far from drunken Irish rabble,” Vronsky says. “They were highly experienced Civil War veterans. And they didn’t mean to conquer Canada so much as hold it hostage and create a crisis in the British Empire,” thereby setting the stage for rebellion in Ireland.
As many as 1,000 battle-hardened Fenians crossed the river June 1. They faced Canadian forces of farm boys, shopkeepers and University of Toronto students called away from finals; many had never fired live rounds before fighting began June 2. Nine militia volunteers of the Queen’s Own Rifles died that day, modern Canada’s first war dead. The invaders lost a like number.
The Fenians prevailed at Ridgeway but stopped short of their strategic target, the Welland Canal, and pulled back to Fort Erie, where they skirmished with Canadian forces once more.
The U.S. Navy blockaded Fenian reinforcements, and while Canadian and British reinforcements were on the way, the Fenians headed back for Buffalo.
The lithograph offers gloriously unreliable history.
The Fenian Brotherhood wore civilian togs or blue Union Army coats, with some Confederate grey. The Queen’s Own Ri- fles wore green, though the infantry battalion from Hamilton did wear scarlet — and did form a battle line. Otherwise, the depicted Napoleonic style of long, exposed lines is visual fiction.
Vronsky says few Canadians know much about the battle — though, he adds, they should: “Ridgeway is our Bunker Hill.” The specter of the Fenian incursion accelerated talks toward Confederation, which came a year later, birthing the Dominion of Canada.
Alexander Muir fought in that nation-building battle, and a year later wrote The Maple Leaf
Forever, a sort of unofficial national anthem.
Feel free to sing it should you find yourself in Ridgeway next week. If so, stop in at Brimstone Brewing and raise a glass of Midnight Mass.
With luck, you could buy a pint for current members of the Queen’s Own Rifles or Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, due in town for 150th-anniversary commemorations.
I vividly recall the 100th anniversary, when images of the battle could be found even on milk bottles.
From the vantage point of a boy of 12, a century seemed like forever ago. Today, on the cusp of codger-hood, 150 years feels like the day before yesterday, and Ridgeway’s battlefield like sacred ground.
“The Fenians were ... highly experienced Civil War veterans. And they didn’t mean to conquer Canada so much as hold it hostage and create a crisis in the British Empire.” Peter Vronsky, Ryerson University in Toronto