David Jacobson had the misfortune to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Canada when our country proudly celebrated the bicentennial of the War of 1812 in 2012. He told me once that he heard hundreds of times that special year that Canada, in fact, had won that war. Finally, Jacobson said, he good-naturedly started to respond this way: “OK,” he said, “would you like a re-match.”
Which brings me to then Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland. On this day in 2017 she delivered a major address just before the official talks between Canada, Donald Trump’s America and Mexico aimed at modernizing NAFTA began.
In her speech, delivered in Ottawa, she channeled the War of 1812 to make her point. “In his book about the war of 1812, the historian Alan Taylor describes how, at the height of the conflict between the United States and British Canada, the U.S. forces unaccountably held off trying to invade the St. Lawrence River valley,” she said. “Such an invasion might have dramatically changed the outcome of the war. But it never happened. The reason, Taylor writes, is that American and Canadian merchants and farmers in the border towns of Ogdensburg, New York and Prescott, Ontario (about an hour’s drive from here) were enthusiastic cross-border traders. And some of them, on the American side, had influence in Washington. Any actual fighting, these Yankee entrepreneurs successfully argued, would be bad for business. So they urged Washington to take care.”
Her history lesson then continued. “Taylor says the mood at the border was illustrated by a sign erected by the Canadians,” she said. “It depicted an American eagle and a British lion with the slogan, ‘if you don’t scratch, I won’t bite.’ Now, as you can imagine, I like that story a lot. It epitomizes one of the most important aspects of trade: It brings us into shared purpose across national borders, working to address common needs – even in the most extraordinary circumstances. Trade is an adhesive, working to connect people even when political differences may push in the other direction.”
Now, anytime a cabinet minister celebrates the War of 1812 and the nation’s proud history is a good day in my books. You can read Freeland’s entire address at this link..
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.