Our bicentennial celebration

[fatbuckRTO]

Originally Posted by OneSickPsycho

Probably because we lost... lol.

If we had lost, we would have become a colony of Great Britain again. By the end of it all, we had our capitol back (slightly toasted), kept New Orleans (unfortunately?) and the Brits quit conscripting our sailors. Not sure how we lost; I don't think the goal of the United States during that war was ever to conquer the Brits (or take Canada), just to get them to quit fucking with us.

My understanding is that a lot of Canadians consider it a victory for Canada. From where I sit, it was never even a war against Canada. It was a war against the British Empire, and Canada was one of the battlefields. That said, had we swept through Canada in a decisive victory rather than fought the Crown to a stalemate, we probably* would have kept it. So, from that perspective, I could see it being viewed as a sort of victory for Canadian independence. If you ignore that they belonged to the British Empire for another 50 years**...



*Definitely

**Or 115 years, or 165 years, depending on your benchmark. I never could really tell when the Canucks considered themselves independent.