Page:George Bryce (1907) Laura Secord A Study in Canadian Patriotism.djvu/11

 A Study in Canadian Patriotism

Rev. Dr. Bryce was the guest of the Canadian Club at their luncheon yesterday afternoon, and delivered an address on the gallant deed of Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. A personal touch, as Professor Osborne, the chairman, remarked, was lent to the occasion by the presence at the luncheon of Mrs. Cockburn, a grand-daughter of Laura Secord.

Like the Rhenish frontier of Alsace and Lorraine, the banks of the Niagara river have for several centuries been the debatable land—the scene of conflict in North America. Long before the coming of the White man, Iroquois and Hurons; Sioux and Ojibways; Eries and Caughnawagas regarded the Niagara peninsula as the march-land between east and west. Its backbone of Burlington heights, the great gorge of Niagara, and its contiguous lakes Erie and Ontario gave scope for strategic movements in war far exceeding the plains of Flanders.

After New York had been taken possession of by the English, and Canada by the French, from the time of Frontenac, till the taking of Quebec by Wolfe—three quarters of a century—the roar of cannon joined with that of the great cataract in border conflict, and the fort at the mouth of the river was alternately English and French.

If during the revoluntionary war it was not the scene of combat, it was because Upper Canada was still a wilderness, but within five years of the treaty of Paris in 1783, the whole Niagara frontier bristled with the bayonets of Butler's Rangers and other loyalists who had turned against the revolting colonies.

In 1812 it was the field of the most sanguinary and determined conflicts which occurred during that, our great war of defence. Everyone has heard of the burning of the Caroline in the 1837 rebellion, while in the Fenian raid of 1866 the chief attack on Canada was made by the Irish patriots along the Niagara river.