hamburger wrote:wolf wrote : "What's this about Canada asserting it's sovereignty in the Arctic with military ice breaker ships?"
i'm sure you remember when the british burned the white house, don't you ?
i thought you were one of those handsome redcoats , weren't you ?
yes, those were the glory days ! hbg
(hope i don't annoy our friends on the other side of the border)
You mean that time when they burnt the White House down in retaliation for them burning down Toronto, which was then called York? No. For some reason we aren't taught about the American War of Independence in schools, though we are taught about Nazi Germany, the Depression and the Cold War (taking a look at the history of both the United States and the Soviet Union during that period).
hamburger wrote:wolf wrote : "What's this about Canada asserting it's sovereignty in the Arctic with military ice breaker ships?"
i'm sure you remember when the british burned the white house, don't you ?
i thought you were one of those handsome redcoats , weren't you ?
yes, those were the glory days ! hbg
(hope i don't annoy our friends on the other side of the border)
It's a good thing that Setanta likes you. ;-)
Wolf, English historians commonly refer to what Americans refer to as the War of 1812 as the American War. I'm not surprised that it is not stressed in your common school history curricula--the United States came out decidedly ahead in single-ship actions, and despite disingenuous contentions by Canadian historians, English records show the commerce war as a draw. The American frigate Essex, even though eventually taken by the English, single-handedly destroyed the English Pacific whale fisheries, incidentally insuring future wealth for American whalers. The war on Lake Ontario was largely a draw, although the Americans burned York, not once, but three times. The war on Lake Erie was a complete disaster for the English. Only in the ground war did they do very well, and then only at the beginning.
A month after the war had ended, the same troops who had burned Washington were disasterously defeated before New Orleans by Andrew Jackson, and General Packenham was killed in the process. All in all, given the David and Goliath nature of the contest, it is not one i would imagine a nation would promote in their official elementary school history.
Hm, I guess not. Still, I learnt precious little about the British Empire in general in my history class. For some strange reason, I did very little British history in my history classes. I can't for the life of me figure out why...
