'Didn't you burn down the White House?' Trump uses War of 1812 to justify Canada as security threat

During a testy phone call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. president Donald Trump reportedly cited the War of 1812 in order to justify seeing Canada as a security threat.

“Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” he told Trudeau, according to sources cited by CNN.

The reason for the call was the U.S. imposition of tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, which Trump has justified on national security grounds.

The new tariffs, announced last week, sparked disbelief from across the political spectrum in Canada. For more than a century, the United States has had no problem building military equipment out of Canadian raw materials. Most famously, the country’s first atomic bombs were fuelled in part by Canadian uranium.

“Canada is a secure supplier of aluminum and steel to the U.S. defence industry, putting aluminum in American planes and steel in American tanks,” Trudeau said last week. “That Canada could be considered a national security threat to the United States is inconceivable.”

Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland made the same argument in a CNN appearance, saying “do you really think Canada … represents a national security threat to you?”

Trudeau was apparently arguing Canada’s loyalty directly to the U.S. president when Trump fired back about the Burning of Washington.

In August of 1814, the U.S. federal capital was indeed invaded and burned by troops based in what is now Canada. Facing little to no resistance, the soldiers destroyed both the U.S. Capitol and the presidential mansion in one day of looting and destruction.

The current-day White House, from which Trump was likely taking Trudeau’s call, had to be mostly rebuilt as a result of the fire.

Canada is part of the British Monarchy. They did indeed burn down the Whitehouse in 1814 which was an action of the War of 1812.

And since then have fought beside us in two world wars, the Korean War, the Cold War, twice in Iraq and once in Afghanistan. If Trudeau's intent was to show that Canada is hardly a security risk then I think they've done that.

BRYCE HONSINGER: My name is Bryce Honsinger. I'm a grade five-six teacher at Applewood Public School in St. Catharines, Ontario.

SIEGEL: And, for Bryce Honsinger's fifth and sixth graders, the War of 1812 is no two day quickie.

HONSINGER: I would say that the units usually stretch between three to four weeks. In Ontario, it's certainly a major component of one of our curriculum strands and it's certainly something that our children relate to because of the heroes that come from the war and people that we look to as role models.

SIEGEL: In his class, the War of 1812 is taught as a crucial event in the development of a Canadian national identity. Honsinger says he uses the stories and records of his own forbearers. They were loyalists who had been on the losing side of the American Revolution, lost their lands and sought refuge and new lives north of the border.

When the U.S. tried to annex their new homeland, they stood their ground alongside British troops and loyal Indians.

HONSINGER: Many Canadians would consider that we won that war because we are not American. We maintain those boundaries. We were fighting one of the great powers to be in the world and we were able to beat them back.

SIEGEL: And those role models for young Canadians today? Well, while American politicians made huge careers in the 19th century as Indian fighters, the great Indian warrior, Tecumseh, is a hero up there.

HONSINGER: He was actually remembered in a lot of local newspapers at the time and 50 year celebrations of battles and things. He's remembered very, very favorably.

SIEGEL: And the bombs bursting over Baltimore Harbor, the burning of the White House, they teach that in Canada.

HONSINGER: Absolutely. They're definitely things that we touch upon because the Americans burned York, which is now Toronto, in 1813 and so the destruction of and the burning of Washington was seen as kind of a retaliation.

SIEGEL: If this is starting to sound like American history through the looking glass, consider the story of the woman I asked Melissa about a few minutes ago, Laura Secord. In Canada, there's a famous brand of chocolates named for her.

Laura Secord was Massachusetts-born, but her loyalist family had moved north. In 1813, invading American soldiers were quartered in her home, her husband had been injured in battle, and she overheard those Americans discussing a plan to attack a British camp under the command of an officer named James Fitzgibbon. The camp was a perilous 20 mile walk away, but as this 1990 song tells it, Laura Secord walked and warned the British so that Canada could remain free, free from us.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SECORD'S WARNING")

SIEGEL: The British troops Laura Secord warned, far from being surprised by the Americans, in fact, surprised them.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SECORD'S WARNING")

SIEGEL: By the way, the Canadians were probably the biggest winners of the War of 1812, but the biggest losers were neither the Americans nor the British. The Indians had hoped to gain a state of their own with British support. In the end, they were forced off their lands instead.

This is NPR News.

https://www.npr.org/2012/06/18/155308632/teaching-the-war-of-1812-different-in-u-s-canada

Not surprisingly, the Canadian history of the war began with a completely different set of heroes and villains. If the U.S. has its Paul Revere, Canada has Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who lost his life defending Upper Canada against the Americans, and Laura Secord, who struggled through almost 20 miles of swampland in 1813 to warn British and Canadian troops of an imminent attack. For Canadians, the war was, and remains, the cornerstone of nationhood, brought about by unbridled U.S. aggression. Although they acknowledge there were two theaters of war—at sea and on land—it is the successful repulse of the ten U.S. incursions between 1812 and 1814 that have received the most attention.

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