Battle of Ridgeway - Historical Significance

Historical Significance

The Canadian press exaggerated the scope and nature of the defeat at Ridgeway, particularly anti-confederationist press which claimed Ridgeway was proof that Canadians will never be able to defend themselves without the presence of the British Army. The inefficiency of the Militia Department under Canada West's attorney general and minister of militia John A. Macdonald was covered up by two Military Boards of Inquiry that concluded that the blame lay with inexperienced frontline troops that panicked and broke, and not with the officers who led them and the government who undersupplied and undertrained them. The Battle of Ridgeway became a point of shame in Canadian national military heritage and history and the Canadian government was reluctant to recognize or acknowledge the veterans of the battle for nearly twenty-five years.

In 1890, the Veterans of '66 Association held a protest demonstration at the Volunteers Monument in Queen's Park by laying flowers at the foot of the monument on June 2, the twenty-fourth anniversary of the battle of Ridgeway. It took a ten-year campaign of protest and lobbying for the Canadian government to sanction a Fenian Raid Medal and land grants to veterans in 1899-1900. The protest became an annual memorial event known as Decoration Day, when graves and monuments of Canadian soldiers were "decorated" in flowers. For the next thirty years from 1890 to 1931, Decoration would be Canada's popular national memorial day, the first remembrance day, commemorated on the weekend nearest to June 2 and acknowledging Canadian fallen in the Battle of Ridgeway, the Northwest Rebellion (1885), the South African War (1899-1902), and the Great War (1914-1918). In 1931 the Remembrance Day Act established November 11, Armistice Day as Canada's national official memorial day. At the same time the Remembrance Day Act expelled the casualties of Ridgeway and the Northwest Rebellion from national memorialization, fixing Remembrance Day to Canadian casualties overseas starting from the South African War.

The Battle of Ridgeway is Canada's first modern battle, the first fought exclusively by Canadian troops and led on the battlefield entirely by Canadian officerx, the battle in which Canada's current modern military sustained its first nine killed in action, and the last battle fought in the Province of Ontario against a foreign invasion.