{"id":15515,"date":"2012-06-16T10:22:51","date_gmt":"2012-06-16T15:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15515"},"modified":"2014-07-13T10:27:04","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T15:27:04","slug":"explosion-1812-one-of-the-biggest-explosions-that-had-ever-been-witnessed-in-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/06\/16\/explosion-1812-one-of-the-biggest-explosions-that-had-ever-been-witnessed-in-north-america\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Explosion 1812<\/em>: &#8220;one of the biggest explosions that had ever been witnessed in North America&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I may have to make some time to watch TV <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2012\/06\/16\/war-of-1812-explodes-on-tv\/\" target=\"_blank\">tomorrow<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This month\u2019s 200th anniversary of the start of the War of 1812 will be marked with a colossal bang: the television premiere of <em>Explosion 1812<\/em>, a new documentary that argues the intentional detonation of Upper Canada\u2019s main ammunition supply at present-day Toronto in April 1813 \u2014 described as \u201cone of the biggest explosions that had ever been witnessed in North America\u201d \u2014 is a greatly underappreciated moment in history that was key to thwarting the U.S. conquest of Canada.<\/p>\n<p>The two-hour, Canadian-made film \u2014 to be aired by History Television on June 17, the eve of the bicentennial of the formal U.S. declaration of war on June 18, 1812 \u2014 recounts how retreating British-Canadian troops at Fort York blew up the colony\u2019s \u201cgrand magazine\u201d along the Lake Ontario shore as American forces closed in on Upper Canada\u2019s capital on April 27, 1813.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>U.S. soldiers outraged at what they considered an act of extreme treachery \u2014 even a war crime because of their comrades\u2019 fatal proximity to the explosion \u2014 went on a vengeful rampage in the captured capital, terrorizing the civilian population and pillaging residents\u2019 property.\u00ca<\/p>\n<p>Those actions, in turn, prompted a similar assault on Washington, D.C., in 1814, when the U.S. capital was stormed by British and Canadian troops who set fire to the White House.<\/p>\n<p>Among the U.S. casualties at York was the famed commander of the invasion force, Gen. Zebulon Pike, an early explorer of the American West whose death \u2014 his chest crushed by falling rock from the blasted armoury \u2014 would be exploited to rally patriotic sentiment in the U.S. for the duration of the war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I may have to make some time to watch TV tomorrow: This month\u2019s 200th anniversary of the start of the War of 1812 will be marked with a colossal bang: the television premiere of Explosion 1812, a new documentary that argues the intentional detonation of Upper Canada\u2019s main ammunition supply at present-day Toronto in April [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,28,5,13],"tags":[207,101,566,985],"class_list":["post-15515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-history","category-media","category-military","category-usa","tag-toronto","tag-tv","tag-warof1812","tag-washingtondc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-42f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15515"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26795,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15515\/revisions\/26795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}