Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst: Everyday Life in Upper Canada, 1812–1814 by Dorothy Duncan (review)

On the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812, this book leaves political and military matters in the background and makes the everyday its focus. This is a refreshing departure from the scholarly and popular literature on the war, which has proliferated over the last few years. It is a mix of popular history and first-hand accounts, most of which were, it must be admitted, written by the elite at the time. Accounts of daily life written by ordinary folk have rarely survived. To make up for this and breathe life into the past, the author has created letters between two fictional sisters.

Nearly two-thirds of the book explores life from the American Revolution up to the eve of the War of 1812. Duncan takes 131 pages to set the scene, implicitly arguing that Upper Canadians were ingenious, persevering, practical people who learned to make the most of their environment and who were concerned primarily about providing for their families. They put these qualities to good use when war entered their lives. Though they were reluctant to leave their farms to fight, when their families and property were threatened they displayed their loyalty and bravery in helping to push back the invaders.

It is a comforting story full of familiar characters such as Mrs Simcoe, the Rev John Strachan, Molly Brant, “Tiger” Dunlop, and Laura Secord. Short chapters read like a series of vignettes each highlighting a few individuals from different walks of life and parts of the province, and including lengthy excerpts from letters, diaries, travel journals, and business records. Many of these primary accounts have been published before, but they are now brought together in this book. They cover a wide range of experiences, from provisioning soldiers at Fort Niagara to clearing land in Glengarry County to falling in love with Captain Bird.

Dorothy Duncan, one of Canada’s foremost culinary historians, author of the award-winning Canadians at Table: Food, Fellowship, and Folklore; A Culinary History of Canada and other works, not surprisingly spends a great deal of attention on food. This is one of the strengths of the book, as the author sits down at one dinner table after another, letting the reader feast on boiled black squirrel with Elizabeth Simcoe in Niagara or select marzipan figures over peppermint pastilles in a confectionery on King Street in York. Stories amuse, such as the one about a friendly dinner between British and American soldiers eight days after war had been declared. One chapter is devoted to recipes such as spruce beer, dandelion wine, and Michilimackinac stew. Another chapter delves into folk cures found in recipe books, such as cedar bark to cure scurvy and wet tobacco applied to bee stings.

The author intermittently comments on the impact that war had on everyday life: teachers had to leave school to enlist, the transport of furs and provisions was disrupted, and families had to constantly balance their duty to defend Upper Canada with the necessity to plant and harvest crops, and to protect and ensure the survival of their families. Their everyday lives were interrupted with worrying about their loved ones who were away fighting, and watching apprehensively for approaching American troops and raiding parties, or even the British regulars and Native allies who sometimes transformed citizens’ homes and barns into headquarters and hospitals. The most cleverly conceived chapter is one that begins in a parlour where young women are creating a banner and traces that banner through the events of war, its hiding place underground during the invasion of York, and its glorious retrieval and carriage through every engagement of the 3rd York Regiment thereafter. The four fictional letters created by the author also help show the progressive impact of the war on Martha, who was hired help at an Inn on Yonge Street. Martha writes to her sister of her duties...