CANADA: Return of a Mace

A second-rate episode in the third-rate War of 1812 was General Zebulon Montgomery Pike’s expedition with 2,500 men in April 1813, across Lake Ontario against York (now Toronto), a village important only as the capital of Ontario. The U. S. soldiers took York after a little skirmishing and raided the Parliament House. On the table of the House lay the legislative assembly’s official mace. Over the Speaker’s dais was a canopy surmounted by a wooden figure of the British lion. Over the mace was what Commodore Chauncey, who had ferried Pike’s men across the Lake, called a scalp. It was the Speaker’s wig. The raiders took them all, as well as the royal standard flying over the Governor’s house.

Before he took York, General Pike had promised the British that his men would not burn or sack it. Soon afterward the powder magazine blew up and a flying stone killed General Pike. On the theory that the British had fixed the magazine explosion, the U. S. troops burnt York to the ground. The burning of York was one of the reasons the British gave for their burning of Washington a year later. Three reminders of the York episode still lay last week in a showcase of the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. They were mace, lion and standard. The wig had vanished.

The U. S. Daughters of 1812 provided money for a memorial tablet to be raised in Toronto to “General Pike and the others of the U. S. forces killed in action.” Toronto’s Mayor William Stewart and his Council had contributed the spot for the tablet on the original site of old Fort York, had agreed to preside at the unveiling ceremonies next July 4.

Last week President Roosevelt sent a special message to Congress reminding it of the old mace and the new tablet and making the following suggestion: “It would be a gracious act for the U. S. to return this historic mace to Canada at the time of the unveiling of the tablet. The mace is a token of representative government established at York nearly a century and a half ago. . . . Since the agreement of 1817 the two countries have by common accord maintained no hostile armaments on either side of their boundary; and every passing year cements the peace and friendship between the peoples of Canada and the U. S. . . .”

Nothing was said about the lion and the

flag.

Ontario’s Premier George Stewart Henry promptly echoed: “This will help to cement amicable relations.”