Hobbyists revisit the last time Canada had its ‘elbows up’ against U.S. annexation [Video]

Each year near London, Ont., a group of people from Canada and the United States gather to recreate a war so many Canadians and Americans rarely think about outside of a history class. 

The War of 1812 raged for three years between Great Britain and the U.S., and saw hostile American troops cross the border into Canada as part of a failed invasion meant to make the fledgling colony of Upper Canada America’s newest state. 

The Battle of Longwoods, fought near the end of the war, in early March of 1814, saw the British and their Canadian and Indigenous allies clash with U.S. forces near Delaware, Ont., as part of an ongoing series of raids in which American troops burned and pillaged Canadian farms and homesteads across southwestern Ontario. 

In his 1980 book, the Invasion of Canada 1812-1813, Pierre Berton called the conflict “a foolish war that scarcely anyone wanted or needed, but which, once launched, no one …