Dr. Peter Vronsky
Historian
Department of History
Toronto Metropolitan University (Former Ryerson University)
350 Victoria Street
Toronto, Ontario
March 26, 2015
Hon. Erin O'Toole
Minister of Veterans Affairs
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6
Dear Minister Erin O’Toole:
I am writing to comment and advise on the call coming from Canadians to
enlist the Ridgeway Nine who were killed in action on June 2, 1866 defending
Canada at Ridgeway and the twenty-two other Militia volunteers from various
parts of Ontario and Quebec who died as a result of wounds sustained and
disease contracted during the Fenian Raids 1866 into our National Books of
Remembrance and into the Remembrance Day memorial heritage. This is a total
of 31 names as recognized by the Canadian Government in 1867. I am attaching
for your reference a copy of the original document stipulating those
casualties and its archival citation in the Library and Archives of Canada
(LAC: Fenian Raid Service Records, Compensation of Injuries, Wounds, etc.,
Received on Active Service Fenian Raids 1866–1868, Adjutant General’s
Office, Pensions and Land Grants, RG9 IC5; Vol. 32.)
This call is not some newfangled idea to “rewrite” history or even change
the long standing historical military memorial traditions later incorporated
into Remembrance Day. The fact of the matter is that the Fenian Raid dead
had been formally memorialized by Canadians from 1890 to 1930 in a memorial
day ceremony called Decoration Day observed on or near June 2, the
anniversary day of the battle of Ridgeway. When Canadians went to fight in
the South Africa War 1899-1902 and the Great War 1914-1918, those fallen in
those wars were likewise memorialized on Decoration Day in ceremonies
throughout Canada in May or June, before there ever was a November 11
Armistice Day marking the end of the war in 1918.
Our military memorial tradition first began in 1890 at Toronto’s oldest
standing public monument today, the Fenian Raid Volunteers Monument on the
University of Toronto campus near Queen’s Park. In the 1890s as many as
50,000 Canadians would gather there to honour the ultimate sacrifice of the
men who defended Canada against invasion by Irish-American Fenian insurgents
in 1866, and eventually the dead in the South Africa War and the Great War
in the 1910s and 1920s.
In 1931 Ottawa introduced the Remembrance Day Act which stipulated that only
casualties fallen overseas since the South Africa War will be commemorated
and with the stroke of a pen, the 31 Canadians who had been previously
honoured in our national military memorial heritage were suddenly forgotten
and excluded.
It is beyond the scope of this letter to explain why it was at that time
politically expedient to exclude the Fenian Raid casualties, however, in
short, the Canadians had died fighting an invasion that had come from across
the border of our neighbour the United States with which Canada had very
unfriendly relations during the 1860s. By the 1930s our relations were
diametrically on the opposite: we had since the 1860s developed the friendly
allied relationship we enjoy today, and it was thought in 1931 somewhat
impolite and “impolitic” to commemorate and acknowledge casualties
inflicted on Canadians from across the US border. Thus only those who fell
“overseas” would be memorialized.
Today we are confident in both our close and friendly relations with the
United States and in the historical evidence that the US Government had not
been clandestinely supporting the Fenian invasion and that it was actually
conducting bona fide efforts to contain the Fenians from invading Canadian
territory. There should be no remaining “sensitivity” in deference to our
American friends to enlist our Fenian Raid casualties into our Remembrance
Day Heritage and National Books of Remembrance.
Let me address here once and for all, the remaining issues raised about the
question of whether your Ministry can right this wrong perpetrated in 1931
when we failed in our promise to all Canadian soldiers: “We will remember
them.”
It is true, that on paper the Canadians who died in the Fenian Raids 1866,
technically died serving the pre-Confederation Province of Canada and not
the current sovereign entity of Canada as it emerged twelve months later in
July 1867.
However:
1. All the casualties were from
units that had been formed under the Militia Act 1855 which today defines
the lineage and heritage of current reserve regiments in the Canadian Armed
Forces. The Ridgeway Nine were members of the Queen’s Own Rifles, formed in
1860 and Canada’s currently longest continually serving infantry unit whose
members served in virtually every conflict Canada was involved in as
recently as Afghanistan. To orphan the Ridgeway Nine, the first nine of
their regiment to fall from the many who died in subsequent wars on an
arbitrary “technicality” is a painful act of cruelty still hurting the
regiment today. The other 22 casualties belong to a variety of regiments
from Ontario and Quebec, some still in service today, including the RHLI of
Hamilton which fought at Ridgeway as the 13th Battalion of Volunteer
Infantry;
2. When the 1867 Canadian government inherited the militia previously
administrated by the Province of Canada, it also inherited the obligation to
continue paying pensions and wound compensations to its servicemen from the
Fenian Raids. It likewise inherited the obligation to commemorate and
sustain the promise that “we will remember” all fallen in the defence of
Canada. It is now directly the responsibility of your Ministry to ensure
this part of the obligation is fulfilled and that the error of 1931 be
corrected. We owe that to every Canadian serviceman and servicewoman
currently serving in our Armed Forces, otherwise our promise to remember
rings false;
3. Although the Fenian Raid 1866 occurred a year before Confederation, it is
important to point out that at least for the purposes of Battle Honours in
the current Canadian Armed Forces, the Fenian Raids 1866-1870 are officially
recognized under the provisions of A-AD-200-000/AG-000 (Ch/Mod 7) The
Heritage Structure of the Canadian Forces, Chapter 3, Section
3, ANNEX A: Authorized Canadian
Battle Honours and Honorary Distinctions, Part C: FENIAN RAIDS, 1866-1870
(LAND), Chief of the Defence Staff , Department National Defence, Ottawa:
2008, page 3A-1;
4. In view of the relatively recent addition to Canada’s National Books of
Remembrance the Nile Expedition 1884-1885 casualties, in which there was no
official involvement of Canada’s army (they were civilian volunteers) in a
conflict in the Sudan, there can be no excuses for the continued exclusion
of the Fenian Raid casualties. Perhaps that recent Book of Remembrance
entitled, South Africa War/Nile Expedition can be expeditiously revised to
now be South Africa War/Nile Expedition/Fenian Raids with an addition of the
31 names of the Fenian Raid casualties;
5. Most urgently, I would also like to point out to you, that under the
current “overseas” provision of Remembrance Day, as it stands, Corporal
Nathan Cirillo is ineligible to be recognized in the Remembrance Day
memorial heritage, despite having died literally while “standing on guard”
for Canada, when he was felled at the War Memorial in Ottawa in November
2014 and not overseas. Warrant officer Patrice Vincent is likewise
ineligible, having been killed in Canada while in service.
This potentially could be of great embarrassment to the Government this
coming November 2015. By acting on the Fenian Raid 1866 casualties and
amending the “overseas” stipulation for acknowledgement in Canada’s
Remembrance Day memorial heritage, your Ministry can seamlessly repeal the
“overseas” provision enabling the acknowledgement of the recent deaths of
these two Canadian servicemen without the appearance of having directly
succumbed to or reacted to acts of terrorism in government decision making
and policy, which is the very objective of terrorism.
I understand that there will be in Toronto a revival this year of memorial
remembrance services on May 28 at the Fenian Raids Volunteers Monument, the
site of Canada’s first “remembrance” day services in memory of modern
Canada’s first 31 soldiers to die. It would be wonderful if by then your
Ministry had acted to correct the error of 1931, and bring back home to our
memorial heritage where they had been prior to 1931, these boys who died in
defence of Canada on Canada’s soil.
There is no “expiry date” on our promise, “We will remember them.” It is as
perpetual and infinite as the sacrifice made by those who died defending our
nation
Yours truly,
Dr. Peter Vronsky
Historian
Author of Ridgeway: The American-Fenian Invasion and the 1866 Battle
That Made Canada