Laura Secord - Legacy

Legacy

Laura Secord Homestead
Location	Queenston, Ontario, Canada 43°09′50″N 79°03′19″W / 43.16395°N 79.05523°W / 43.16395; -79.05523
Type	Historic house museum

Laura Secord Monument
Coordinates	43°05′22″N 79°05′45″W / 43.08941°N 79.09576°W / 43.08941; -79.09576
Location	Queenston Heights
Material	Granite
Height	7 feet
Opening date	1901

Historian Cecilia Morgan argues that the Secord story became famous in the 1880s when upper-class women sought to strengthen the emotional ties between Canadian women and the British Empire, and especially needed a female heroine to validate their claims for women's suffrage. The first product of their campaign was Sarah Anne Curzon's verse drama, Laura Secord: The Heroine of 1812, in 1887. The play was responsible for "a deluge of articles and entries on Secord that filled Canadian histories and school textbooks at the turn of the 20th century". Although critics negatively reviewed the play, it was the first full work devoted to her story and popularized her image.

Secord has been compared to Québécois heroine Madeleine de Verchères and to Paul Revere, the iconic American Revolution hero. Her story has been retold and commemorated by generations of biographers, playwrights, poets, novelists and journalists.

Early feminist Emma Currie, after discovering a newspaper clipping of the story, began a lifelong interest in Secord's life. After tracking down information from relatives as far away as Great Barrington, she published a biographical account in 1900 called The Story of Laura Secord, and later successfully petitioned to have a Secord memorial erected in Queenston Heights. The cut stone granite monument stands 7 feet (210 cm) and was dedicated in 1901. In 1905, her portrait was hung in Parliament. Playwright Merrill Denison made a radio play of her story in 1931, one that mixed serious history with parody.

One hundred years after her historic walk, and to capitalize on Canadian patriotic feelings, Laura Secord Chocolates was founded by Frank O'Connor in 1913. The chain's first location opened on Yonge and Elm Streets in Toronto, initially packaging the chocolates in black boxes adorned with a cameo of Secord.

Her grave marker at Drummond Hill Cemetery is inscribed:

To perpetuate the name and fame of Laura Secord, who walked alone nearly 20 miles by a circuitous difficult and perilous route, through woods and swamps and over miry roads to warn a British outpost at DeCew's Falls of an intended attack and thereby enabled Lt. FitzGibbon on 24 June 1813, with fewer than 50 men of the H.M. 49th Regt., about 15 militiamen and a small force of Six Nations and other Indians under Capt. William Johnson Kerr and Dominique Ducharme to surprise and attack the enemy at Beechwoods (or Beaver Dams) and after a short engagement, to capture Col. Bosler of the U.S. Army and his entire force of 542 men with two field pieces.

The Secords' Queenston homestead was fired upon and looted during the War of 1812. Restored and given to the Niagara Parks Commission in 1971,, it is now a museum and gift shop at Partition and Queen streets in Queenston.

Thomas Ingersoll's old home on Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was used as the town's Free Library from 1896 until 1913, when the Mason Library was built on the site. In 1997, the Great Barrington Historic District Commission made 18 October that year to be Laura Secord Day, and had a plaque dedicated in her honour before Mason Library.

Laura Secord is the namesake of a number of schools, including Laura Secord Public School (also "Laura Secord Memorial School", 1914–2010) in Queenston, Laura Secord Secondary School in St. Catharines, Ontario, École Laura Secord School in Winnipeg, Manitoba (built 1912), and Laura Secord Elementary School in Vancouver, British Columbia. A plaque dedicated to Secord has been placed at Beaver Dams Battlefield Park. In 1992, Canada Post issued a Laura Secord commemorative stamp. In 2003, the Minister of Canadian Heritage declared Secord a "Person of National Historical Significance", and in 2006 Secord's was one of fourteen statues dedicated at the Valiants Memorial in Ottawa.

The Royal Canadian Mint will release a quarter in June 2013, with Secord's picture on it, to celebrate the bicentennial of the War of 1812. This quarter is the last in the series of four. The Mint also released a two dollar coin (Toonie) on June 18, 2012, to mark the occasion.