St. Lawrence River in Winter
(a talk by Amy Whitehorne)

November 26, 2011

Amy Whitehorne, educator at the Brockville Museum, gave her presentation on the St. Lawrence River in winter. Illustrating her talk with interesting historic photographs and sketches, she discussed sports on the river (skating, hockey, curling), Ice Sailing, and Ice Fishing, the one activity that is still ongoing.

She pointed out that the previous industrial uses of the river for Logging and Ice Harvesting have both disappeared. And she discussed the river as a border which used to “disappear” in the winter — after all, around Fort Wellington it is less than one mile across to the American side, a distance easily walked or skated.

It was therefore simple for American troops to “raid” Brockville during the War of 1812: they just walked across the ice! Not much damage was done, except that a few residents were temporarily imprisoned and some supplies taken. However, Red George Macdonnell, in charge of the garrison at Fort Wellington, was very irritated and wanted to take revenge by raiding the American side. The Lieutenant-Governor happened to be in residence at Prescott, and he didn’t want Macdonnell to attack but said he could at least drill his troops on the ice between Prescott and Ogdensburg in order to “intimidate” the Americans. That’s just what Macdonnell did, but every little while he edged the troop of combined British soldiers and Upper Canadian militiamen closer to the American side. Eventually they were just off the New York shore, and suddenly attacked Ogdensburg. You can read an excellent article about this at www.1000islands.com/ogdensburg/war_1812/.

Amy Whitehorne invites everyone to visit the Brockville Museum, housed in an 1830s house at 5 Henry Street in Brockville.