 This year’s Remembrance Day ceremony featured a rare treat. The cannons at the Battle Monument were installed by the Canadian Federal Government in 1895, and were last fired at the opening of the Crysler’s Farm Battlefield National Historic Site in 1961. This year, they were fired again for the first time in over 50 years. The cannon themselves are a Blomefield Pattern 24 pounder cast iron gun, cast in 1806 in Falkiek Scotland at the Carron Foundry. They likely came over as ships guns mounted on the larger warships of the day. The iron skeleton carriages they’re mounted on are for peacetime only, and in time of war the cannon are put back on wooden carriages. The service load in the day was 8 pounds of powder; for the Remembrance Day ceremony, 1 pound of powder was used for the blank signal round. Preparation for return to service wasn’t a trivial task. From Bob Irvine:
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Founded in 1666, Fort St. Jean is celebrating 350 years as a key post guarding the highway to Canada along the Richelieu River and the development of the town around the Fort. For more information, visit stjean2016.org.
The American invading army that landed at Doran Bay near Iroquois in November 1813 were a hungry group of soldiers who needed to complete the march towards the town of Cornwall and its military stores as quickly as possible. According to reports, the American soldiers were on relatively meagre rations and supplemented their meals with food confiscated from the locals. Croil’s account of the Battle of Crysler’s Farm in his book “Dundas”, speaks of the invaders eating the raw honey found in the many hives kept by the farmers along the front. There are some reports that the soldiers, who gorged themselves on the honey, became quite ill with dysentery and as such their fighting abilities were somewhat less than optimal. While the actual effect that the consumption of the raw honey had on the invading force, it is a matter of historical record that there numerous compensation claims for destroyed honey bee hives put in by settlers along the St. Lawrence in Dundas County after the War of 1812.
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