Peter Vronsky - Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion And The 1866 Battle That Made Canada

RIDGEWAY

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RIDGEWAY

The American Fenian
Invasion and the 1866 Battle
That Made Canada

PETER VRONSKY

ALLEN LANE CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2011

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

Copyright Peter Vronsky, 2011

Map copyright Peter Vronsky, 2011

The credits on page 393 constitute an extension of this copyright page.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Vronsky, Peter

Ridgeway : the American Fenian invasion and the 1866 battle that made Canada / Peter Vronsky.

(The history of Canada)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-670-06803-6

1. Ridgeway (Fort Erie, Ont.), Battle of, 1866.

2. CanadaHistoryFenian Invasions, 18661870.

I. Title. II. Series: History of Canada (Toronto, Ont.)

FC480.F4V76 2011 971.048 C2011-906112-0

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 2477.

Dedicated to the memory and remembrance of Canadas First Fallen

***

Ensign Malcolm McEachren

Sergeant Hugh Matheson
Corporal Francis Lackey

Lance Corporal Mark Defries

Private Christopher Alderson
Private Malcolm McKenzie

Private John Harriman
Mewburn Private William Smith
Private William Fairbanks Tempest

***

Second Battalion Volunteer Rifles of Toronto
Queens Own Rifles

Killed in Action at Limestone Ridge
Battle of Ridgeway

Canada

June 2, 1866

Its been too long home boys to be forgotten.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF CANADA SERIES

Canada, the world agrees, is a success story. We should never make the mistake, though, of thinking that it was easy or foreordained. At crucial moments during Canadas history, challenges had to be faced and choices made. Certain roads were taken and others were not. Imagine a Canada, indeed imagine a North America, where the French and not the British had won the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Or imagine a world in which Canadians had decided to throw in their lot with the revolutionaries in the thirteen colonies.

This series looks at the making of Canada as an independent, selfgoverning nation. It includes works on key stages in the laying of the foundations as well as the crucial turning points between 1867 and the present that made the Canada we know today. It is about those defining moments when the course of Canadian history and the nature of Canada itself were oscillating. And it is about the human beingsheroic, flawed, wise, foolish, complexwho had to make decisions without knowing what the consequences might be.

We begin the series with the European presence in the eighteenth centurya presence that continues to shape our society todayand conclude it with an exploration of the strategic importance of the Canadian Arctic. We look at how the mass movements of peoples, whether Loyalists in the eighteenth century or Asians at the start of the twentieth, have profoundly influenced the nature of Canada. We also look at battles and their aftermaths: the Plains of Abraham, the 1866 Fenian raids, the German submarines in the St. Lawrence River during World War II. Political crisesthe 1891 election that saw Sir John A. Macdonald battling Wilfrid Laurier; Pierre Trudeaus triumphant patriation of the Canadian Constitutionprovide rich moments of storytelling. So, too, do the Expo 67 celebrations, which marked a time of soaring optimism and gave Canadians new confidence in themselves.

We have chosen these critical turning points partly because they are good stories in themselves but also because they show what Canada was like at particularly important junctures in its history. And to tell them we have chosen Canadas best historians. Our authors are great storytellers who shine a spotlight on a different Canada, a Canada of the past, and illustrate links from then to now. We need to remember the roads that were takenand the ones that were not. Our goal is to help our readers understand how we got from that past to this present.

Margaret MacMillan
Warden at St. Antonys College, Oxford

Robert Bothwell
May Gluskin Chair of Canadian History

University of Toronto

LIST OF MAPS