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documentary heritage of the War of 1812 is rich. This is particularly
true of the correspondence and reports which form the basis for
the information presented in this display. Selection of this material
involved the examination of many documents, choosing those which
illustrated a particular issue or fact in an interesting way.
This was intended, so far as is possible, to present the war and
its aftermath as it was seen by the participants.
The selection of visual materials was a more challenging task.
During wartime few people had the time or inclination to illustrate
what was going on around them. It was necessary to select images
created before or after the war to provide an idea of how things
might have looked at the time of the conflict. The art work of
Elizabeth
Simcoe,
wife of Upper Canada's first Lieutenant Governor was particularly
valuable in this respect. Thomas Burrowes' watercolours of the
St. Lawrence and Kingston region were equally important as a visual
source. The work of these two artists forms a valuable part of
the Archives holdings. Additional watercolours and drawings of
Elizabeth Simcoe and Thomas Burrowes can be viewed through the
Archives Visual Database.
Other materials were selected to provide an idea of how the war
was viewed by later generations, an issue as important in may
ways as how it was seen by contemporaries. The portraits of Generals
Brock, Drummond and Prevost by Berthon were commissioned by the
Government of Ontario to commemorate the history of the province
and the British connection. A generation later C. W. Jefferys was
creating works of historical imagination which, in their romanticized
view of history, helped shape the attitudes of school children
through history texts.
The documentation of battlefields and monuments through the photographic
record provides interesting information on how these sites looked
before the development of the historical parks system and the
encroachment of suburban development on rural areas. We are indebted
to such early amateur photographers as M. O. Hammond, John Boyd
and Marsden Kemp for a wealth of images of this nature. |
