Among the other methods of arousing the patriotic feeling of our people was the erection of monuments on our great battlefields in memory of the victories gained in the struggle to preserve the freedom of our country in 1812-’14.
The Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, one of the patriotic organisations which sprang up over the Province, had started a movement for erecting a monument on the field of Lundy’s Lane where the last important and the most hotly contested battle of the war took place in July, 1814. They had collected a number of subscriptions but not sufficient for the purpose, when Goldwin Smith offered through the late Oliver A. Howland to supply the balance required, provided that he might write the inscription so as to include both armies in the commemoration on equal terms. This offer was promptly declined by the Society, which had no desire to honour invaders who had made a most unprovoked attack upon a sparse people, who had nothing whatever to do with the assumed cause of the quarrel.
Shortly after, the Canadian Government took the matter in hand, and provided the balance required for the Lundy’s Lane Monument, and the full amounts required for monuments on the fields of Chateauguay and Chrysler’s Farm.
The Lundy’s Lane Monument was finished and ready to be unveiled on the anniversary of the battle, the 25th July, 1895, and the Secretary of State, the Hon. W. H. Montague, had promised to unveil it and deliver an address. The day before Dr. Montague telegraphed to me that he could not go, and asked me to go on behalf of the Government and unveil the monument. I agreed, and he telegraphed to the President of the Society that I was coming. About two thousand people were assembled. It will be remembered that Mr. Goldwin Smith had commented severely upon the proposal to put up a monument at Lundy’s Lane, in his lecture on “Jingoism” delivered in 1891. He said, “Only let it be like that monument at Quebec, a sign at once of gratitude and of reconciliation, not of the meanness of unslaked hatred.” I replied to this in my lecture on “National Spirit” shortly after, and said that the Professor, “considering how he is always treating a country that has used him far better than he ever deserved, should be a first-class authority on the meanness of unslaked and unfounded hatred.”
At the time of the unveiling of the monument, when speaking in the presence of the officers and members of the Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, I naturally felt it to be my duty to compliment them upon their work, to congratulate them on the success of their efforts, and to defend them from the only hostile criticism that I knew of being directed against them. I spoke as follows in concluding my address, as appears in the newspaper report:
It was well, the speaker said, that they should commemorate the crowning victory, which meant that he could that day wear the maple leaf, could be a Canadian. He was aware of one peripatetic philosopher who had said that the noble gentlemen of Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, in putting up a monument to Canadians alone, were doing nothing but displaying the signs of an unslaked hatred. He would say that to show themselves afraid to honour the memory of their forefathers would be to make an exhibition of contemptible cowardice. Lieut.-Colonel Denison then argued that every great nation which has ever existed has shown itself ready to acknowledge the deeds of those who had fought for it, and he cited Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome in ancient history, and Switzerland in modern times, in proof of this assertion. The erection of such monuments, he said, taught the youth of the land to venerate the memory of the past, and encouraged that sentiment of nationality which was throbbing now so strongly in Canada. (Applause.) The past ten years have witnessed a great improvement in that respect, he said. The flag can be seen flying everywhere, the maple leaf is worn, and Canadian poets celebrate in verse the finest passages of our history. The speaker concluded by expressing the thanks of all to the Government for deciding to erect monuments to commemorate Canadian battlefields. He was glad that the first had been erected on this sacred frontier; that at Chrysler’s Farm would mark the spot of a great victory, and he was glad for the thought of sympathy with their French-Canadian brothers which had led to the commemoration of the brilliant victory of Chateauguay, where, against the greatest odds of the war, 500 French-Canadians had defeated 5,000 Americans.
| Where France’s sons on British soil Fought for their English king. |
They should never forget that they owed a sacred duty to the men who fought and died for the independence of their country. (Applause.)
The Historical Society objected strenuously to a proposed inscription for the monument, and stopped its being engraved, and asked me to urge upon the Government to put something different. This was done, and I was asked by the Minister to draft one. It was accepted, and now stands upon the monument as follows:
Erected by the Canadian Parliament in honour of the victory gained by the British and Canadian forces on this field on the 25th July, 1814, and in grateful remembrance of the brave men who died on that day fighting for the unity of the Empire.