Here, 200 years later, is what Canadians know about the War of 1812:
A) We won.
B) We burned down the White House.
C) Sir John A. Macdonald played a pivotal role (no small feat for someone who wasn't born yet).
D) There was something about Laura Secord chocolates.
E) It was in 1812. We think.
Here is what Americans know about the War of 1812:
A) They won. This is one of the more remarkable findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Canada's Historica Dominion Institute: both Canadians and Americans believe their side emerged victorious.
The poll showed Canadians think staving off American conquest saved us from sharing U.S. politics and government, their gun laws and, to a lesser extent, citizenship with the cast of Jersey Shore (I'm not making that up; turns out the funsters at the Historica Dominion Institute have a quirky sense of
humour).
One-third of Americans, meanwhile, named the composition of The Star Spangled Banner as the most significant outcome of the war (seems odd, but at least they didn't cite Johnny Horton's godawful 1959 hit The Battle of New Orleans).
All of which misses the real point, which is how differently the story is told in Canada and the U.S., says University of Victoria historian Rachel Hope Cleves. Having taught the war in universities on both sides of the border, she has heard both versions.
"Canadians remember the War of 1812 as a war between Canada and the U.S.," she says. Americans, on the other hand, think of it as Round Two of the War of Independence, with the U.S. fighting off a bullying Great Britain and Canada not really playing a role at all.
The result is each country thinks of the conflict as a David and Goliath story, with itself cast as David.
It goes to show that history is interpretive, Cleves says - not merely the recitation of facts and dates, but a series of arguments about the meaning of the past.
It's true that the war did end the question of whether Canada (or at least the colonies that would later become Canada) would be swallowed up by the newish U.S. republic. Many on the American side thought of themselves not as conquerors but liberators who would free their northern neighbours from a tyrannical monarchy. When Canadian militiamen lined up alongside the British soldiers and Tecumseh's coalition of native forces, it pretty much popped that balloon.
But the real winners and losers were not the nations, Cleves argues. Rather, the war was a victory for "settler culture" and a blow to indigenous groups on both sides of the border. In the U.S., the Creek native people lost huge swaths of territory on the Gulf coast, while the end of Tecumseh's confederacy - he was killed at Moraviantown near presentday Chatham, Ont. - allowed the western expansion he had hoped to prevent. In Canada, the 1814 treaty that resolved the border issues, ending the American threat, made Aboriginals less valuable as allies, and they lost political power.
Students on both sides of the border lap this stuff up when they get a chance to learn it, Cleves said.
That's good, as the Ipsos Reid poll shows we have lots to learn. Two-thirds of Canadians did indeed say that Macdonald, who became our first prime minister in 1867, was a key player in a war that began 55 years earlier. Not sure if that means we suck at history, math or both.
And no, we didn't burn down the White House. Our British teammates did, but we Canadians were on the bench when the goal was scored.
As for the question of who won the war, let's just be happy that Canada is an independent country, relatively free of both Snooki and handguns, which is the result we wanted.
And if the Americans like to think they won, that's OK, too. Knowing the importance they put on military history, we wouldn't want them looking for a rematch.
