From the editor

Are you planning to do anything on the church, Mennonites and the War of 1812? This is the 200th anniversary of that war. Without it—without the defeat of the American invasion of Canada—there would be no Canada and no Mennonite Church Canada. … Americans won’t be thinking about the war at all, partly because you lost it—well, technically, it was a draw—and because it wasn’t that significant in the big scheme of things. You did get a national anthem out of it, though.—John Longhurst

This cheeky email from a Canadian friend sparked my interest in a war we don’t spend much time talking about. That’s unfortunate, because the current relationship between Canada and the United States got off to a rocky start when we invaded Canada, and England invaded the United States on Canada’s behalf. But 200 years later, these former enemies are friends and share the longest undefended border in the world.

How is it that some enemies become friends while other enemies maintain ugly animosities for generations? It seems impossible that Israel and Palestine would ever have an undefended border. Or North and South Korea. Or Pakistan and India.

Yet our country is now allied with former enemies Japan and Germany, mortal adversaries during World War II. Our country is also closest in culture and shared interests with the country to the north that we still had plans to invade as late as 1930 (see Longhurst’s News Analysis).

Perhaps it’s easier for enemies to become friends when the original quarrel is not between the two of them. That was the case with the War of 1812.

“The conflict between our two nations actually lasted about three years,” writes Longhurst. “It began on June 19 [1812], when the United States declared war on Great Britain. Reasons for the war included British trade restrictions against the United States, the impressments of American citizens into the Royal Navy, British support for Aboriginal people fighting against Americans in the west and a desire by some American politicians to annex Canada.”

The war was fought in three “theaters.” For Canadians, the one that matters most was the battles on and near the Great Lakes. But the British also invaded Baltimore—the battle that generated the Star-Spangled Banner—and New Orleans. While both the British and U.S. forces temporarily occupied each other’s territory, a treaty to end the war returned the territories.

An important but forgotten dynamic in the war: the British were allied with several Native American nations and planned to create an independent Indian state in the Midwest under British sponsorship. Had the British won, the shape of our nation and the plight of Native Americans could have been significantly different.

So what’s worth remembering about this war?

The battles that took so many lives and property—the British burned Washington D.C.—were a part of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. For the British, what happened on our continent was a sideshow and quickly forgotten.

How many people today are being harmed and property destroyed because of the “sideshows” to our nation’s wars? Will Iraq and Afghanistan, where war has created so much carnage, remember the wars as anything other than an imperialistic empire attempting to protect its access to oil?

Perhaps if we get out of the way, as England did for us in 1815, Iraq and Afghanistan can befriend their enemies. We’ve done that with Canada.