Fort Wellington 1838 To Present
Fort Wellington retained a regular garrison of British soldiers after the Rebellion. If you visit today, the Fort is restored to its condition in 1846, when the garrison comprised a modest detachment of Royal Artillerymen and a company of riflemen from the Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment.
This Regiment was composed of veterans of the British Army who volunteered to serve in the border fortifications in Canada. Because of the close proximity of the United States, the British garrison in Canada suffered from high rates of desertion. British deserters who could reach the United States were not deported back to Canada. The Army's solution was to only recruit veterans into the Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment, offer them a better rate of pay as well as pension benefits and the possibility of land grants upon the completion of their service. Consistent with the Duke of Wellington's suggestion that light infantry and rifle units would be most useful in Canada, the Regiment was also raised as an elite, rifle-armed unit.
The task of the Fort's garrison was to occupy the Fort and prevent it from being seized by surprise by insurgents or other belligerents. The Fort's main purpose was to hold the military stores of the Upper Canadian militia for the region.
The British Army left Fort Wellington in 1863, when the Fort became the sole responsibility of the militia. It was a regular site of militia operations, and was garrisoned during the Fenian Raids of 1866.
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Famous quotes containing the words fort, wellington and/or present:
“How often we read that the enemy occupied a position which commanded the old, and so the fort was evacuated! Have not the school-house and the printing-press occupied a position which commands such a fort as this?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Something is about to happen. Leaves are still.
Two shores away, a man hammering in the sky.
Perhaps he will fall.”
—Alfred Wellington Purdy (b. 1919)
“It cannot be denied that for a society which has to create scarcity to save its members from starvation, to whom abundance spells disaster, and to whom unlimited energy means unlimited power for war and destruction, there is an ominous cloud in the distance though at present it be no bigger than a man’s hand.”
—Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944)