William Bothwell A full page newspaper advertisement by the Fort York Foundation has reminded those who live in, and those who live happily beyond, Metropolitan Toronto that the Old York’s War of 1812 defence works are a shared inheritance. In 2012 a handsome new Visitor Centre will become the focus of a 43 acre National Historic Site in the shadow of the Gardner Expressway. That is just east of the Princes’ Gate to the C.N.E. grounds that were once known as the Garrison Reserve.

The three battery artillery sites, magazine, block house and other facilities once stood within a few metres of the lakeshore, watered by Garrison Creek and backed by dense bush where huge trees grew so closely together that the sun did not dry the damp forest floor. The shore has been extended by landfill, the stream is underground and the once-wooded area is otherwise occupied.

Before Fort York was completed - Lieutenant Governor Simcoe thought the name Toronto “outlandish” - armed raiders from the United States attacked in what could be called “the third civil war between Englishspeaking people”.

The first had been fought (1642- 51) in England, the second (1775-83) in the old North American colonies.

The third was the War of 1812-15. In 1813 an army from across Lake Ontario landed just west of the Humber River and planned to advance from York on Kingston, Montréal and Québec.

Since 1890 there had been considerable migration to Upper Canada by people from the northern states who were unhappy with the centralising and warlike policies of the new federal government in Washington. President James Madison was certain that the extinction of British North America would follow his 1812 declaration of war. He was mistaken. The War of 1812 heightened Canada’s determination to remain “empire loyalist”.

Fort York was partly destroyed and was rebuilt after the invasion failed. It remained prepared for further attack until well after the fourth (‘American’) civil war (1861-65) and the threat of Fenian raids by militant Irish republicans.

After the 1867 Canadian Confederation and the westward expansion of both countries that had much in common, albeit with different developing national mythologies, the recognition grew that Canada and the U.S.A. are partners in the stewardship of a continent that is threatened by more than disputes between “children of a common Mother”. The old forts have given way to other kinds of ‘homeland security’.

The Canadian Encyclopedia lists 54 forts, either military or trading posts, important in our national history. Fort York is one of them. In 1983 Canada Post issued commemorative stamps honouring the following ten. 1) The Halifax Citadel in Nova Scotia. In 1749 a wooden stockade enclosed a fortress to guard the arrival and departure of colonial ships. Queen Victoria’s father, Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, served there briefly. The present fortifications date from 1828.

2) Fort Chambly on the Richelieu River defended Montréal against attack from the south, whether by British colonists and their Iroquois allies before 1760 or, later, by revolutionary American separatists.

3) Fort Rodd Hill guarded the narrows at Esquimalt (Victoria), B.C. Lieutenant .John Rodd surveyed the area for the Admiralty in 1847. Concealed guns with maximum flexibility there have never been fired in combat.

4) Fort Wellington was constructed at Prescott ON in 1812. Obligingly, the merchants of Ogdensburg, N.Y. supplied its defenders with food and other materials in defiance of the republican authorities.

5) The fort at Coteau-du-Lac. QC guards what from aboriginal times was a St Lawrence River crossing. It is the site of North America’s first lock canal around the local rapids.

6) Fort Henry at Kingston ON is a ‘must see’ for Ontarians. The onetime capital city and the Rideau Canal were both vulnerable to enemy attack.

7) Overstepping Fort York and Fort George at Niagara, the postage stamp series moved to Fort William on Lake Superior. It was a trading post of the North West Company before its amalgamation with the Hudson’s Bay Co. The builders of the C.P.R. demolished the original buildings.

A new theme park near Thunder Bay ON replaced it.

8) The fort at Lévis opposite Québec was important at the time of the Fenian threat. It defended the Grand Trunk Railway line that ran through Maine en route to the Maritime provinces.

9) Fort Prince of Wales on Hudson Bay at the mouth of the Churchill River was begun in 1689 as a trading place. It was later abandoned as militarily unnecessary.

10) Returning eastward, Fort Beauséjour (lovely name!) was built in French colonial times to guard the Chignecto Isthmus between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Seized by a British force in 1755, it was renamed Fort Cumberland and abandoned after Confederation.

More than 500 Canadian forts have been catalogued. Forty or so post offices (Fort Frances, Fort Erie, Fort Severn, Fort Chimo) still perpetuate the title.

The Canada Post series may remind parents that collecting stamps that recall Canadian history may be both an instructive and, in due course, a profitable hobby for children.

A December 21 Globe and Mail editorial lamented the short shrift Ontario schools give to our history. Such knowledge is the necessary foundation for citizenship but across Canada the subject tends to be treated as part of ‘social studies’. An agreed national curriculum is needed.

There is more to the Story of Canada than our treatment of ‘first nations’, minorities and immigrants, our linguistic and political divisions and our wartime and peacekeeping experience. Nor should history curricula be left to provincial ministries only.

The old emphasis on the history of ‘the North Atlantic triangle’, the interaction between France, Britain and their various North American colonies, their common European heritage and our relation to other cultures is basic to our understanding of ourselves and of our place in the world.