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Blood and Daring by John Boyko: book review

How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation
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“They coveted Florida and seized it; they coveted Louisiana and purchased it; they coveted Texas, and stole it; and then they picked a quarrel with Mexico which ended by their getting California.(…) The acquisition of Canada was the first ambition of the American Confederacy and never ceased to be so, when her troops were a handful and her navy scarce a squadron.  Is it likely to be stopped now, when she counts her guns afloat by the thousands and her troops by the hundreds of thousands?”  Thomas Darcy McGee, 1865.

Canadians have been dealing with mixed reactions as they have watched the division and dysfunction south of the border in recent years and, in particular, in the months leading up to and during the 2020 US election:

  • There is gratitude and even pride that we have not fallen prey to the same polarisation that paralyses the American political system.
  • There has been fear that our long-time friend and ally is no longer predictable, and that their actions might harm Canada. Trust has been badly harmed.
  • There is a determination to avoid the division, the political unrest and even violence that currently characterizes our neighbour.
  • There is a renewed questioning of our institutions: would they avert such an outcome? what components of them need to be preserved, or changed, to ensure our democracy serves us into the future?
US Civil War

This is not the first time Canadians have watched dissension and unrest in the United States and evaluated our position on the North American continent and in the world. In fact, every one of these emotions and reactions were front and centre as the United States , divided as never before or since, fought the Civil War, before the Canadian Confederation came into being.  If you think the US is divided today, consider that more Americans were killed in the Civil War than in any war since. More than 600,000 died and the US population was only 35 million: less than the current population of Canada.

In a book written in 2013, but never timelier, John Boyko shows us that Canadian history can be exciting, and gives an insight into how dynamics which parallel today’s helped give birth to our country’s identity: so often defined in contrast to the United States.  Blood and Daring: How Canada fought the US Civil War and Forged a Nation is a fascinating read in view of recent events in the United States.

“There is but a step between liberty and despotism under a Republican form of government. Let all British subjects ponder these things, and ask themselves what there is to be gained, after all, by living under a Republic.” London Free Press, 1861

As the Civil War raged, Canadians and Maritimers (then independent colonies) were officially neutral.  The rebelling Confederate states took advantage of our neutrality and stationed spies and agents north of the border. They had ships built and provisioned with arms in Britain and Halifax.  

The Lincoln government balanced the risk of dividing its efforts by attacking Canada to annex it, fearing attack from Southern Rebels working from Toronto, Fredericton and Halifax. 

At the same time, movements were afoot in Britain to end its responsibility for defending the Canadian colonies.  

These factors and others led many Canadians to give serious consideration to joining the United States.  

Nation building

History turned on the willingness of political enemies like George Brown (founder of the Toronto Globe) and John A. Macdonald, along with Georges Cartier and Thomas Darcy McGee and others to join together and develop a constitution for a new united Canada that could defend itself.  To do it they put aside their differences and developed a form of government designed to protect Canada from the most obvious failings of the American Constitution.  

There were two key factors: 

  1. Greater centralization versus the “states’ rights” that characterized the US model
  2. The supremacy of Parliament over the Prime Minister, rather than a directly elected President

In bringing together the support needed to create our country, Sir John A. MacDonald “talked more, smiled more, drank more, and persuaded more about more than anyone there” and worked harder than anyone else. 

MacDonald used his remarkable charisma and political wiles and wisdom to create the alliances that led to the passage of the British North America Act and the founding of Canada in 1867.  Through it all he had to manage the distrust of the United States, as rebels initiated actions from Canada against the Northern States, warring factions in Great Britain, the drive for independence of the Maritime provinces, and even the impact of Irish nationalist Fenians attacking Canada as a proxy for Britain.

Residential Schools

Nowadays, we cannot talk about MacDonald without addressing his association with residential schools.  MacDonald inherited this shameful system, which was designed to assimilate Indigenous Peoples into the Eurocentric civilisation of the British colonizers. 

Like nearly all of his contemporaries he believed this was the right way to eliminate “the Indian problem” and for indigenous peoples to become Canadians.  

In Britain, where then as now, the upper classes sent their children away at very young ages to be raised in boarding schools, perhaps this seemed to make sense.  

As we now know, the residential school system perpetrated nothing less than cultural genocide.  It tore children from their parents and shamed them about their own heritage.  It was rife with cruelty and physical and sexual abuse. 

More than 40% of children died in residential schools (often of tuberculosis) or shortly after leaving.  

Our allies in founding our country through exploration, the fur trade, and in the defence of our country in the War of 1812 against the invading Americans, were the once proud and independent Indigenous Peoples, who now had lost their ancestral territories and were no longer self-sufficient.  

Ironically, they had come to be regarded as a barrier to building the nation that could not have emerged without them.  The residential school system was one of the tools used to overcome that barrier.  It is a huge blot on our country’s history, and Macdonald shares the blame for it.  Historians also still debate but largely disapprove of his handling of the Red River Uprising, Riel, and the Metis.

Yet, as we address this issue and all the other challenges that face our country, we have Sir John A. MacDonald to thank for our independence and the strength of the institutions through which we grapple with them.  

Just how much we owe him, John Boyko’s Blood and Daring makes clear.  Its exciting narrative draws the reader in while objectively dealing with the strengths and weaknesses of MacDonald and his Canadian, British and American contemporaries.  

This was nation-building at a time with many parallels to our own.  Boyko entertains and informs…and perhaps most importantly, helps us learn from history that whatever crises we may be dealing with, our ancestors stood up and faced the same kinds of challenges, and left us a legacy to be respected and protected.  

Will we be equal to the task?