The earliest pioneers were Loyalists who came to Upper Canada (Ontario) after the Revolutionary war. They were quickly joined by others, either from the Highlands of Scotland, from other parts of the British Isles and Europe, or from neighbouring parts of the United States. The cities of Cornwall and Kingston are the significant sentry points for the region. In the War of 1812, Kingston served as the strategic naval base at the western end of the river, and, Cornwall served as a strategic supply base to assure movement, by land and water, of what was needed up river.

Fort Henry at Kingston, today a National Historic Site, rests on the point that was first fortified in late 1812 to provide protection to the dockyard on Point Frederick (current site of the Royal Military College of Canada). Kingston was home to the Provincial Marine, 1784 to 1813, and to the Royal Navy, 1813 to 1830s. In the spring of 1814, the dockyard was transferred from the Quartermaster General’s Department to the Royal Navy and became an official Royal Navy station. Several warships were constructed there, including the largest warship to serve on the lakes, HMS St Lawrence.

As the naval base, Kingston, at the head of Lake Ontario and at the western end of the River, was involved in countering actions from the American naval centre at Sackets Harbor. After the war, Fort Henry was built (completed 1832) as a military linchpin at the intersection of the three strategic waterways which meet here: the Rideau Canal, the St Lawrence River, and Lake Ontario. Fort Henry is the largest fortification west of Quebec City.

• The incident at Bath is a colourful illustration of naval action occurring here during the War of 1812. In November 1812, the British corvette Royal George (22 guns), commanded by Commodore Earle, was intercepted off False Duck Islands by a seven-ship fleet under Commodore Chauncey. While pursued, the Royal George escaped through a gap between Amherst Island and the eastern tip of Prince Edward County into the Bay of Quinte's north channel. The chase resumed in light winds the following day when the Royal George arrived safely in Kingston harbour. Chauncey, intent on capturing the largest British warship then on Lake Ontario, attacked her in the harbour, but withdrew after exchanging fire with the Royal George and with shore batteries.
• In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the Rideau Canal was built for strategic military purposes as a supply line to defend Canada (completed 1832). It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site (along with Fort Henry and the Kingston fortifications) and is recognized as the best-preserved example of a slackwater canal in North America. The canal runs from Kingston Harbour and follows the Rideau River Valley to Ottawa.
• The Rideau Military Settlements were established (1816-1822) for disbanded soldiers and British emigrants in the townships adjacent to Perth, Lanark and Richmond. The first military depot was based in Perth. This loyal population received free land grants in return for future defence and protection of Upper Canada. Scottish emigrants were quartered in the barracks at Brockville during the winter of 1815-16 until the survey of the settlement was completed. The soldiers discharged from units, such as the Glengarry Light Infantry and the Swiss regiments of De Meuron and De Watteville, formed a majority of the original settlers. However, the soldiers and family members also came from many diverse disbanded units and from many countries in continental Europe. In large part, the demobilized officers of the units were settled in Perth.
• HMS Radcliff, built in 1817, was the last ship of war built on the Great Lakes at Kingston’s dockyards. The Rush-Bagot Treaty concluded in 1817 between the United States and Great Britain disarmed all existing war ships on the Great Lakes and banned the construction of new warships here. This agreement is a lasting symbol of the peaceful relations between Canada and the United States. HMS Radcliff, now disarmed, is conserved in Mallorytown Landing.
• As a formal recognition of Kingston’s role in the defence of Canada during the War of 1812, the Parliament of Canada founded the Royal Military College of Canada here in 1874 to provide Canadians entering the military profession with “a complete education in all branches of military tactics, fortification, engineering, and general scientific knowledge.”

Brockville (originally Elizabethtown) is the oldest incorporated city in the Province of Ontario. Its present name was chosen as a patriotic act in the summer of 1812 to honour the great commander General Brock. Major General Sir Isaac Brock, memorialized as one of Canada's outstanding military heroes, is commemorated with a plaque at St Peter Port Church on the Isle of Guernsey where he was born. He entered the British Army in 1785 and, in 1802, he was posted to Canada with his regiment. In 1811, just prior to the outbreak of War, Brock became President of the Executive Council and Administrator of Upper Canada (Ontario). He rapidly organized the defence of the new colony. His leadership culminated in the capture of Detroit. General Brock was killed at the Battle of Queenston Heights, 1812, and he is buried on the battlefield.

During the war, Brockville was attacked by a force of 200 regulars and militia from Morristown who came across the frozen St Lawrence River (February, 1813). The detachment was led by Major Benjamin Forsyth of the United States Army. The village was garrisoned by a company of Leeds militia who, taken by surprise, could offer no resistance. The raiders released prisoners from the jail, took a quantity of arms, horses and cattle, and carried off a number of residents. The resentment aroused by this raid led to the successful British attack on Ogdensburg a fortnight later.

Gananoque played an essential role as a forwarding point on the supply line moving up the St Lawrence River from Montreal and Cornwall to Kingston. An incursion of regulars and militia led by the Captain Forsyth of the 1st US Rifle regiment made an attack here (September 1812). A detachment of the 2nd Leeds militia, under Colonel Joel Stone, offered some resistance, but withdrew its force of two subalterns and about 40 soldiers. American forces seized the stores, burned the government depot, and withdrew.

Parks Canada and the citizens of Prescott, the "Fort Town", proudly conserve Fort Wellington National Historic Site. Like Fort Henry, the current fort was built later (1837) on the ruins of the original fort that was used in the War of 1812, along with a shore battery by the river, to defend this area’s part of the St Lawrence River supply route. Prescott is home to a British military hospital and barracks (one of the earliest surviving military buildings in Ontario). Colonel Edward Jessup, the founder of the community, and many disbanded members of Jessup’s Rangers settled in Leeds and Grenville Counties, 1784. Colonel Jessup was the first leader of the local militia.

Prescott keeps alive the heroic and spontaneous action of the Glengarry Light Infantry, whose impulsive leader, Lieutenant Colonel “Red George” Macdonell led a force of 480 regulars and militia over the frozen St Lawrence River (against artillery) and captured the military post at Ogdensburg, February 1813. The attack was made in response to the recent raid on Brockville; however, it was contrary to the orders of Sir George Prevost, Captain General and Governor in Chief of British North America. Advancing across the ice in two columns, Macdonell's right column presented an easy target for the enemy artillery, but after a fierce fight, the reinforced left column forced the American rifle regiment to withdraw. American military stores were captured and the schooners burned. This successful assault across the ice ended the occupation of Ogdensburg by American forces for the remainder of the war and it helped make secure the St Lawrence supply link between Upper (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec).

Today, Brockville, along with Gananoque and Kingston are three major gateways to the celebrated international Thousand Islands region of the St Lawrence River; known by First Nations as The Garden of the Great Spirit. In waterways used by American and British warships in the War of 1812, Canada’s smallest national park (1904) preserves these exquisite islands which are a tiny land bridge uniting the immense Canadian Shield and the Adirondack Mountains of the eastern United States and Canada.

The Battle of Crysler’s Farm, a National Historic Site at Morrisburg, took place in November 1813. It played a pivotal role in the defence of Montreal and in the independence of Canada as a sovereign state. The day that is remembered for those killed at Crysler’s Farm, November 11th, is the national Day of Remembrance for all who have died in battle while serving in Canada’s armed forces.

In early November 1813, an American army of close to 8,000 troops, commanded by Major General Wilkinson, left Sackets Harbor and slipped down the St Lawrence as part of a two-pronged attack on Montreal to cut Upper Canada off from the rest of the British territories in North America. Wilkinson was followed and harassed by a British corps of observation consisting of about 800 regulars, militia and Mohawk commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Morrison. Morrison's smaller force, established in a defensive position on John Crysler's farm, was attacked by a contingent of the American army numbering about 4,000.

Mohawk from Tyendinaga fought with distinction alongside British regulars, Canadian Fencibles, Canadien Voltigeurs, and Dundas County militia. The hard fought engagement ended with the Americans’ withdrawal from the battlefield. East of Crysler’s Farm, a skirmish at Hoople’s Creek occurred the day before the battle. That same night, knowing that the odds for a victory at Crysler’s Farm were slim to nil, the community of Martintown, in Glengarry, burnt their bridge to help slow down the expected American Army.

The morning after the battle, Wilkinson’s flotilla continued en route down river to Cornwall. The residents of the town evacuated while Glengarry and Stormont militia conveyed the depot’s supplies to the base at Coteau-du-Lac. The American army occupied the empty town for several days before a decision was made to suspend the attack on Montreal. The flotilla then sailed up the nearby Salmon River to French Mills (Fort Covington) and set up a winter camp for the Army. Pressure eased only later in February 1814 when the flotilla was scuttled after the Army was ordered to withdraw from the Cornwall area.

• Glengarry and Stormont militia had special responsibility for the protection of supplies at Cornwall and on the St Lawrence River in the eastern area. In 1812, some members of the Corps of Canadian Voyageurs based at St Regis were also involved in keeping supplies moving from Montreal. Nearby, the historic stone church (ca. 1802) at St Andrew’s served as the area military hospital during the war. It is now preserved as the parish hall. The military history of the three eastern United Counties and their militia units is today preserved by the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders in Cornwall.
• Williamstown is home to the Sir John Johnson Manor House National Historic Site. In June 1813, Sir John, Superintendent General of the Indian Department, organized an expedition of about two hundred Mohawk from the Montreal area and sixty from Akwesasne, to join the British forces in the defence of Niagara.
• The Glengarry Light Infantry was mobilized in 1812 as a regular British army battalion and was modelled on the first Glengarry Fencibles, a British highland regiment that had been mobilized twenty years earlier at the beginning of the war with Napoleonic France. Detachments of the 1812 Glengarry Fencibles fought locally at Sackets Harbor, French Mills (Fort Covington), Ogdensburg and Oswego; in many battles of the Niagara campaigns; and in other regions. The original “parade ground” for the Fencibles, in front of the Bishop’s house (1808), is at the St Raphael’s National Historic Site.
• In the attack on Ogdensburg, led by his cousin “Red George,” the chaplain, Reverend Alexander Macdonell, of St Raphael’s, was in the battle with his friend, Reverend John Bethune of Williamstown. In the eyes of Canadian military historian, Dr George F G Stanley, Reverend Macdonell (the Big Bishop), is one of Canada’s and Great Britain’s most distinguished military chaplains. He is the only known person to have served in Scotland’s Glengarry Fencibles and in Canada’s Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles.
• Glengarry County especially remembers the birth of the first Premier of the Province of Ontario (who would later take office, 1867). The Honourable John Sandfield Macdonald was born in St Raphael’s following the Battle of Queenston Heights. He is buried in St Andrew’s cemetery. He was named “John Brock” in memory of the battle’s two heroes: General Sir Isaac Brock and his aide-de-camp John Macdonell; a military officer from Glengarry. Together in battle and in death, they lie beside each other in the Brock Monument near Niagara. A soldier and a politician, Macdonell became the Attorney General of Upper Canada in 1812 (the first person trained-in-Canada and the youngest to hold this position).

The Eastern Region of Ontario displays major legacies of the Peace dividend from the War of 1812. The lessons of the war led to the building of the Rideau Canal (1832) and to the selection of Ottawa as the national capital by Queen Victoria (1857). Historians see the significance of the past in the building of a modern vision of the St Lawrence River supply route in the 1960s. Highway “401” was built as part of the Trans-Canada Highway system and is a reminder of the first King’s Road (set on old aboriginal trails and footpaths of Eastern Ontario) that linked Cornwall and Kingston; it was constructed during the “War of 1812”.

Scholars see the Peace dividend in the construction of the St Lawrence International Seaway mega project, completed in 1959. This development was undertaken by the United States and Canada to provide a new supply line on the river; thereby, allowing the interior of the North American continent to trade with the World. The Seaway construction incorporated international bridges built on a military design. New cultural showcases in the Cornwall to Kingston corridor have emerged in the form of: Upper Canada Historical Village at Morrisburg; Lost Villages of the St Lawrence at Long Sault; and, Parks of the St Lawrence, extending from the Quebec border to Kingston.

For virtually two hundred years, the peoples of the Eastern Region of the Province of Ontario have shared a magnificent, uniquely peaceful international water boundary with the Northern Region of the State of New York. The entire region of the Upper St Lawrence River is an ongoing product of its remarkable bonds of international cooperation and friendship.

Akwesasne Museum, Hogansburg
Arthur Child Heritage Museum of the Thousand Islands, Gananoque
Bath Museum
Brockville Museum
Carman House Museum, Iroquois
Cornwall Community Museum
Fairfield-Gutzeit House 1796 (1812 Discovery Centre), Bath, Ontario
Fort Henry Museum, Kingston
Forwarders' Museum, Prescott
Lost Villages Museum, Long Sault
Marine Museum of the Great Lakes, Kingston
Perth Museum
Nor'westers and Loyalist Museum, Williamstown
Glengarry Pioneer Museum, Dunvegan
Rideau Canal Museum, Smiths Falls
Royal Military College of Canada Museum
Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders Museum, Cornwall
United Counties Museum, Cornwall
United Empire Loyalist Heritage Centre & Park, Adolphustown, Ontario
Fort Wellington National Historic Site