If not for the British protecting fur trading posts during the War of 1812, Canadians today could have been driving in miles per hour and spelling centre with an e-r.
“I think if the Americans had won, I don’t think there would have been a Canada,” said Jean Morrison, who served as Fort William Historical Park’s historical researcher for 15 years.
Morrison is speaking at the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Feb. 28 about the role of the fur trade in the War of 1812 and the impact it had on the outcome of the war.
With this year being the 200th anniversary of the war between the United States and Britain, there have been several re-enactments taking place across North America as well as many articles written about the war.
However, hardly any mention the fur trade.
“When you think of the War of 1812, what comes to your mind? The Niagara Peninsula, General Brock, Laura Secord.
Hardly anyone knows the Canadian fur trade was heavily involved,” said Morrison.
The first action of the British once the Americans declared war in 1812 was to seize the island of Michilimackinac, the strait between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron now knows as Mackinac.
“It was a key fur trade post so when the war was declared, the British thought it was the most important place to capture because it controlled the movement of fur trade goods from Fort William to Montreal,” Morrison said.
It also controlled the shipping on the upper lakes and the loyalty of the First Nations not only in the nearby areas, but also in the Mississippi region. Morrison said they were loyal because of gifts given to them by the British known as Indian presents.
“They could have turned over to be in favour of the Americans and all of that part of Canada, the upper lakes and probably this part would have been in the United States’ hands,” she said.
“The British took that island very soon after the war and they kept it.
The Americans kept trying to get it back but they failed.”
Another important fur trade post controlled by the British during the war was Astoria, located at the mouth of the Columbia River on the West Coast. It was an American post sold to the North West Company during the war.
After the war, Astoria wasn’t returned to the Americans. At the time Alaska was controlled by the Russians and California was under Spanish rule. It was made that Britain and the U.S. would both control the area in-between.
Later, after the Hudson Bay Company took over the North West Company, the boundary between the two colonies was created on the 49th parallel.
“If the North West Company hadn’t done it, probably the whole of the west coast, including California and Alaska, probably the whole thing would be American now,” Morrison said.
Several years ago, Morrison and her husband travelled to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa and were dismayed to see no mention of the fur trade in their exhibit on the War of 1812. She corresponded with the museum but said they wouldn’t yield on the topic.
So she was pleased when she heard Ontario History, a scholarly journal, would be publishing a special issue on the War of 1812 and were asking for people to submit papers.
“I thought, ‘ah-ha, this is my chance to get back at the Canadian War Museum,’” she said.
Her paper on the role of the fur trade during the War of 1812 will be published in Ontario History, which is expected to be out in May.
Ontario History editor and curator of the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Tory Tronrud said the fur trade is one of the major causes of the War of 1812 and has been neglected by historians for the last 200 years.
“I think what Jean is doing is bringing it to light. That’s something that’s quite important to the historical community and to our understanding of the war itself,” he said.
Tronrud said he believes the fur trade has been ignored by so many historian is geographical.
Most of the battles took place in southern Ontario and Quebec and in the U.S. and most of the historians that have examined the war have been from those areas.
Morrison will be speaking at the Thunder Bay Historical Museum starting at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 28.
