The American Civil War was America’s third civil war. The first occurred within the Revolutionary war when about a third of the people were neutral and another third were loyal to the British king. Many loyalists were harassed and killed and thousands fled to the safety of what would become Canada. The second American civil war began in 1812 under pretences so rickety they would blush the chalky cheeks of Dick Cheney. Because so many of those dying in Canadian border towns were the same un-American Americans who had fled the Revolution, the War of 1812 was really a cousin’s war.

We are as wrong to consider the 1861-1865 American Civil War the country’s first and only civil war as we are to consider it only an American war. France, Britain, Russia and what was becoming Germany were all active participants. More than any other country, however, Canada fought the American Civil War.

At the time, of course, Canada was not yet a country but a group of British colonies lying on America’s porous border. The colony called Canada was a squabbling and politically dysfunctional amalgam of Canada West (Ontario) and Canada East (Quebec). Most Americans also called New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Canada but such name-calling would spark a fight in any Halifax or Moncton bar.

Many Americans made no secret of coveting Canada with newspapers and politicians regularly reporting plans to buy, bomb or annex it. America had invaded Canada in the Revolution and again in 1812. The new civil war had Canadians steeling themselves to fight again.

Canada was involved in the Civil War’s cause, course and consequences. It affected when Canada was created and the nature of that creation. Here are the top ten ways that Canada fought the American Civil War:

1. Slavery – Canada abolished slavery in 1833. About 30,000 racial refugees followed the North Star to forge lives of dignified freedom. Southerners were enraged because ex-slaves living happy, productive lives challenged everything they were saying about Black people’s desires and potential and the foundation upon which their society rested. The Canadian examples inspired Northern abolitionists. The Underground Railroad grew along with the animosities between North and South. Harriet Beecher Stowe based Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the book that Lincoln said caused the war, on an escaped slave living in Canada.
2. Self-Defence – With war on the horizon, Lincoln’s newly appointed Secretary of State William H. Seward secretly advocated reuniting America by instigating a war with Britain by capturing Canada. The attack, he said, would lead Southerners to rally around the flag and forget secession and Britain would negotiate an end to the war by ceding Canada to America. Lincoln considered the idea but said no – for now. British and Canadian officials took Seward’s public threats quite seriously. Canadians helping the South through arms sales and other means led many American newspapers, politicians and generals to call for invasion. Over eleven thousand British soldiers were dispatched to the border. The Royal Navy was redeployed. Canadian militia were trained and armed. Border fortifications were enhanced and artillery stood ready.
3. Soldiers – About 40,000 Canadians donned the blue and gray. Nearly all fought in Northern regiments. Most volunteered, some were tricked, and others, even children, were kidnapped and forced into uniform. Canadians fought in every major battle and 29 earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. Canadians swept down from Gettysburg’s Little Round Top, stood with Grant at Lee’s surrender and a Canadian led the troops that captured Lincoln’s assassin.
4. Spies – When the war began turning south for the South, Confederate President Jefferson Davis created a spy network in Canada. Stationed in fancy Toronto and Montreal hotels, spy leader Jacob Thompson organized Confederates and their Canadian sympathisers to run communications for and weapons to the South. In Halifax, money was made selling supplies and information to Southern blockade runners and then to the Northern ships pursuing them.
5. Sorties – Jacob Thompson disturbed and distracted Northern military operations with raids to free Confederate prisoners. He had yellow-fever infected clothing distributed in northern cities. He organized the plot that saw theatres and hotels simultaneously burst into flame along Manhattan’s Broadway. The raid on St. Albans, Vermont led to deaths, an incursion of American troops into Canada and Congressional reprisals designed to punish Canada.
6. Separation – The Copperheads hated Lincoln. They were Northerners who wanted the war stopped with slavery and the Confederacy preserved and, failing that, the formation a new country comprised of several mid-west states. Lincoln called the Copperhead movement “the fire in the rear” and said that he feared its power as much as the Southern armies. The Copperhead’s chief spokesman was Clement Vallandigham who inspired Copperheads and campaigned to be governor of Ohio from his headquarters in Windsor, Canada West.
7. Salvation – Joining Canada with the Maritime colonies in a new political arrangement through a process called Confederation had been discussed since the 1850s. When it appeared that Lincoln would win the war and then feared that he would then turn his massive army northward, the notion became a necessity. Canada needed to be bigger, stronger, richer and more efficient and the civil war meant that it needed it all now rather than some dreamy someday. Canada had to create itself to save itself. Former Reform Party leader and owner and editor of the powerful Globe newspaper George Brown got bickering politicians from both parties in a room, Macdonald kept them talking, Cartier forced federalism, and Tupper and Tilley brought in the Maritimes. The talks began in the fall of 1864 in the shadow of war and led to the birth of nation forged in war.
8. Suspicion – Days after the guns fell silent there was a shot in Ford’s Theatre. Even while Lincoln lay dying in a boarding house across the street, investigators turned to Canada’s involvement in the president’s shooting and the attempted assassination of Seward. The border was shut. Agents were dispatched to Montreal. Weeks later, the very first question asked in the trial of the conspirators was about their links to Canada. It was proven that John Wilkes Booth had spent time planning the assassination while with Jacob Thompson’s Confederate conspirators and spies in Montreal.      
9. Sanctuary – With the war over, many Confederate leaders faced either prosecution or life under the military occupation of their enemy. Many fled to Canada. Among them was General Pickett who led Gettysburg’s tragic final charge. President Jefferson Davis’ family had been in Quebec for some time and after his release from prison he joined them. Cheering crowds welcomed his appearance in Kingston, Toronto and Niagara Falls. The haggard, sick man lived peacefully in Canada until an amnesty allowed him and his compatriots to return home.
10. Self-Preservation – Britain had helped the Confederacy by allowing ships to built in Britain and sold to the small Southern navy. One of the most deadly was the Alabama that roamed the seas sinking Northern supply ships and even a military vessel. After the war President Johnson and then President Grant demanded an inordinate sum from Britain as reparation – it was called the Alabama claim. American and British officials discussed erasing the debt owed in exchange for Britain ceding Canada to the United States. In 1871, Prime Minister Macdonald ventured to Washington to negotiate Canada’s survival in what became the Civil War’s final battle.

Canada played a role in causing the war, 40,000 Canadians fought in the war, and its border, streets and harbours were involved in the war. Those who created the country used the United States as an example of how not to organize a society; after all, they invented Canada while the war was demonstrating the American model’s abject failure. Canadians today are children of those who were inspired by the fear of one country and the vision of another.

An edited version of this article appeared in this week’s Macleans magazine. To learn more, check out Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation available through Amazon, Chapters and sensible book stores everywhere.

Hockey was my world. Road hockey, table-top hockey and most of all ice hockey filled my eight-year-old mind with fun and possibility. My bedroom walls were festooned with pictures of NHL hockey players. Most had been carefully snipped from the magazine that arrived every Saturday with my Dad’s Hamilton Spectator. Every week I mailed away the little paper ring from a Bee Hive Corn Syrup container and the good people at the St. Lawrence Starch Company of Port Credit, Ontario rewarded my gorging on the gooey stuff with another picture. Some were even autographed.

So there on my wall was Bobby Hull, Frank Mahovlich, Terry Sawchuk, Stan Mikita and more. They were all handsome but scarred. They posed as gladiators, armed and with the power and violence of savage youth just behind their eyes. There were a lot of pictures but one player had a shrine – my hero – Gordie Howe.  When I was eight, Gordie Howe was playing for the Detroit Red Wings and he was the best there was and the greatest there had ever been.

Bee Hive Corn Syrup Picture of Gordie Howe

Every winter my Dad flooded our backyard. The huge rink had nets, boards, benches and even a penalty box. For night games he hung floodlights. Every winter afternoon I would rush home from school, suit up, and hit the rink. All the neighbourhood kids were there but we did not just play hockey; we became the players on our trading cards and bedroom walls. I was always Gordie Howe. We were living Roch Carrier’s The Hockey Sweater a generation later and a province over but with the same passionate imaginations.

My shameless whining earned me a complete Gordie Howe uniform. You can see by the picture below that I’m on the rink with my mitts and hat to stay warm but still safe in my helmet. The two slabs of thin, brown leather front and back is a galaxy removed from the storm trooper helmets of today. Plus, and this is something my Dad can still not explain, he had bought me a helmet that placed on my forehead a large bull’s eye embossed with the word TARGET. Amazing! Perhaps it was too many pre-pubescents availing themselves of the invitation to practice their aim that turned that cute face into the one that now haunts my cruel shaving mirror.

The author as Gordie Howe

Gordie Howe was my hero because he had attained excellence. He won the NHL’s MVP 6 times and 29 times he was chosen for the All-Star team. He won nearly every trophy and award for which he was eligible. He was the Red Wings number one goal scorer year after year and in the league’s top five for 20 consecutive seasons. Upon retirement he had amassed an astronomical 1,071 goals and most of those in the era of low scoring games and against Hall of Fame goalies.

He was tough. Gordie Howe was his own enforcer. To create a little more room and time he would hit, elbow and fight. Players understood that he would exact a price for every slash or slight. Current players still speak of a Gordie Howe hat trick: one game with a goal, assist and a fight.

Howe had natural athletic gifts but he didn’t rest on them. Rather, he worked endlessly to hone them. He would arrive at practices a half hour early. Alone, in a silent Olympia Stadium, driven by nothing but his conscience and determination to be the best he could be, he would improve his puck-handling, footwork and prowess with shooting right or left with equal speed and accuracy. He was the hardest worker at every practice and when his team mates hit the showers he would work some more.

Howe also had a sense of community. He leant his name and presence to a variety of charitable causes. When on the road he often left other players relaxing or partying and took sticks and pucks to hospitals where he visited sick children to sign autographs and pose for pictures. There was no publicity. He did not do it because it would look good; he did it because it was good.

One day my Dad told me that a nearby Golf Club was hosting a charity tournament that would be attended by a number of NHL hockey players. I sat up. Among the players, he said, was Gordie Howe. I was on my feet. And then, when I was about to explode with excitement, he said that he had purchased tickets.

I dressed up in my chino pants, desert boots, golf shirt buttoned right to the top, and my favourite cardigan sweater; the one with the diamonds. We arrived at the course and wandered a bit until…there he was. I could barely believe it. And then, with wide and disbelieving eyes, I saw my Dad actually approach and then speak with him. And then, my God, he waved me over. I looked up, way up at Mr. Howe and….well the rest I don’t remember.

My Dad told me later that Mr. Howe rubbed the top of my head as adults often do with little kids and said, “So son, do you play hockey?” I apparently looked up and said…..nothing. Not a word. Not a syllable. My Dad said, “Yes sir, he does.” Mr. Howe then reportedly asked, “What position do you play son?” I swallowed hard and I guess my lips moved but I said…again…nothing.  My Dad asked if Mr. Howe would pose for a picture. He grinned gently as my fists clenched with the excitement of an eight-year-old who had, for him, just met the equivalent of God, the Son, and Holy Ghost all in one man.

Gordie Howe and the author.

I was privileged to meet Mr. Howe again at a taping of Don Cherry’s Grapevine – a short-lived TV show set in a phony bar. This time I was an adult and so while still in awe, I managed to enjoy a brief conversation. I told him of my speechlessness at our first meeting and he assured me that it happened all the time. He was humble and kind. I was thrilled but also relieved that my childhood hero was a nice guy.

It is a revealing and worthwhile exercise to consider whether you had or have a hero and who a society celebrates as heroic. A hero is not just a celebrity. Fame, after all, can often be transitory, tawdry and earned for the wrong reasons or won but not really earned at all. On the other hand, a hero is one whose character and deeds epitomize that which you value. A hero inspires and guides with genuine and unique talent, industry, generosity, and humility. Heroes are usually famous and often powerful but they needn’t be. My grandfather was another of my heroes and he was neither. But if, like Gordie Howe, more people were more like him then the world would be a little better place.

A few years ago a CBC radio host asked Ken Dryden to name hockey’s best era. He said, “Figure out what year it was when you were ten years old. That was hockey’s best era.” He’s right. Hockey players no longer decorate my bedroom. I have other heroes now and none of them are athletes but Gordie Howe remains deep in my heart. It’s sad that he is now fighting the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease; that mean, long goodbye. But to me Gordie Howe will always be young, strong and important. I will always recall that skinny kid skating alone under the lights on a frigid Canadian winter night and begging Mom for just a little while longer; just a few more minutes to imagine himself bigger, stronger, and better; just a few more minutes to be Gordie Howe.

Maybe Bullwinkle J. Moose taught me everything I need to know about Russia. I was a child when Khrushchev and Kennedy nearly blew me up and I didn’t understand the air raid sirens that were regularly tested in my hometown. But I understood that Bullwinkle and Rocky were the good guys and that Boris and Natasha, those nasty Russian spies, were no good at all.

We were good and they were bad and that is all we needed to know. But then, as always happens and always will, things changed. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the son of poor peasant farmers, became Russia’s leader. He realized that a country can have guns or butter but not both. The Americans are still trying, by the way, but ask them about their debt and deficit.

His revolution began with glasnost – openness. He slowly ended the brutal totalitarian control that had been created by Lenin and cemented in place by Stalin. The media was afforded more freedom and the arts encouraged to embrace criticism and satire and to, oh my goodness, have fun for fun’s sake.

Mikhail Gorbachev

It continued with perestroika – restructuring. Multi-candidate, secret ballot elections were held for the first time in history in municipalities and then to create a new parliament. The party and the state began surrendering its iron grip on the economy as Gorbachev introduced free market and land reforms.

The Cold War warmed as Gorbachev scrapped hundreds of nuclear weapons. Rather than dispatching tanks as his predecessors had done in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, he allowed Polish protests to play out. He ended Russia’s withering Afghanistan war and began withdrawing troops from Eastern European satellites.

It was about then that I arrived in Moscow. I was among a group of teachers escorting 96 teenagers for a week in March, 1989. These are the seven lessons I learned:

Bureaucracy Can Be Crazy: On our bus from the airport I asked Svetlana, our guide, about the soldiers perched in glass fishbowl stations at major intersections. I was told they worked the traffic lights. When I quipped that it must be a boring job at three in the morning she said that at night the lights are switched to work automatically. Before I could ask the next and obvious question Svetlana whispered, “In Russia, everybody works.”

People Are Resilient: I waited in a long, silent line to purchase a ticket, then in another line to present the ticket, and then in a third line to finally pick up a half dozen bagels. There were long lines everywhere and for everything. People lined up to buy the red rubber boots that we saw on every child. They lined up for meat, for clothes, and for toilet paper. At the giant GUM department store across Red Square from the Kremlin we found empty shelves and empty stores. But people carried on. Nearly all had a look – a Russian look. It was in the eyes. The eyes betrayed people who had been worked too hard for too long for too little; people who were too tired for too long and had been too long lied to and lied about. But there they were every day lining up, going to school and to work, families together in parks, teenagers in love, old folks holding hands, and all just carrying on as best they could.

Arts Should Be Accessible: We attended a performance of the Bolshoi ballet. Established in 1776, the company is world renowned and performs regularly in an enormous and gorgeous theatre. The place was packed. A ticket cost the equivalent of about 25 cents. The circus was cheap. Theatre was cheap. Like Washington’s Smithsonians, the museums were free. Even as the government struggled to reform a sputtering economy it funnelled tax dollars into the arts – the voice and spirit of the nation – to keep them accessible in both senses of the word not just for the privileged few but for all.

There is Such a Thing as Evil: The siege of Leningrad began in 1941 and lasted for 900 horrifying days. Over 600,000 Russians died with 4000 starving to death. You can still see bullet and shell marks in many buildings. No one can visit Piskariovskoye Cemetery without tears. We walked past the monument of a grieving mother to stand in awe before the 186 mounds vanishing beyond our view, beneath which lay over half a million people in mass graves. Not one of them deserved to die. Not one of us should forget the price Russians paid while living within one evil, to defeat another that was visited upon them.

There is Beauty Everywhere: It is not called Red Square because of the bricks or communist party but rather because the Russian word krasnaya can mean either red or beautiful. The square witnessed too many testosterone-riddled displays of phallic missiles but it remains beautiful indeed. St. Basil’s Cathedral at one end and Kazan Cathedral at the other are stunning. The Hermitage Museum’s artifacts and architecture are breathtaking. But there was also beauty in the little boy who stood alone beneath a Leningrad bridge with his fishing pole and a look of patient concentration but who smiled for my camera. There was beauty in the young mother who gently picked up her crying baby and rocked him to sleep amid the bustle of the city and her busy day. Like at all airports, there was beauty in the Russian families welcoming tired travellers with hugs and smiles.

Hermitage

We Can Never Judge a People by Their Government: As we toured and wandered and met more people, I thought of the many Canadians who at that moment were disavowing everything Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was back home doing and saying. He was not me and I would have shuddered to be judged according to everything he said and did, or by everything Mr. Trudeau said and did before him.  We know this about ourselves and others. We know that it is especially true when considering people whose governments are not democratic; but we sometimes forget.

There Are Good People Everywhere: Another teacher and I were enjoying some free time by exploring the justifiably famous Moscow subway. A gentleman in a business suit noticed our Canadian flag pins and through heavily accented English offered to show us some of the more celebrated stations. We saw spotless, gleaming subway platforms that more closely resembled churches, museums, galleries or shrines.  We toured for over an hour and a half with our new friend waving off his afternoon appointments. With our goodbyes we gave him some Canada pins and he said, “When I thought of Canada I always thought of hockey but now I’ll think of Paul and John.” I replied, “And from now on when I think of Russia, I’ll think of Pavel.”

Today, for the first time in a long while, I again thought of Pavel. I had read about those who thought Gorbachev was going too fast and others who insisted he was moving too slowly. I had read of the coup and sadly followed the years of Yeltsin’s chaos.  I had thought of Pavel when former KGB chief Vladimir Putin began reversing Gorbachev’s reforms by closing all that had been opening. I thought of Svetlana who said that we could measure Russia’s progress by the degree to which Lenin became accepted as a bad leader. I wonder what she thinks now that Mr. Putin has clearly established himself as an heir not to Gorbachev but Lenin.

Today, as Russia moves forward by moving backward in its application of history’s wrong lessons, I wonder about Pavel and Svetlana, and the little fisherman and the young mother. I wonder if the Russian look is returning to too many eyes.