<P> The War of 1812 was highly significant in Britain's North American colonies . After the war, British sympathizers portrayed the war as a successful fight for national survival against an American democratic force that threatened the peace and stability the Canadians desired . Throughout the war, most of Canada's inhabitants assigned the war to an American desire to annex the British colonies, a perception reinforced by American Generals like William Hull, who issued proclamations stating that Canada would be annexed . </P> <P> An alleged Canadian myth from the war was that Canadian militiamen had performed admirably, while the British officers were largely ineffective . Jack Granatstein has termed this the "militia myth", and he feels it has had a deep effect on Canadian military thinking, which placed more stress on a citizens' militia than on a professional standing army . The United States suffered from a similar "frontiersman myth" at the start of the war, believing falsely that individual initiative and marksmanship could be effective against a well - disciplined British battle line . Granatstein argues that the militia was not particularly effective in the war and that any British military success was the work of British regular forces and the result of British domination over the sea . Isaac Brock, for example, was reluctant to trust the militia with muskets . </P> <P> Others argue that, in fact, the Canadian militia played important roles in several key engagements, including at the Battle of Chateauguay where they were central to defeating the American advance on Montreal in the fall of 1813 . Historian Robert Henderson has referred to this as "The myth of the Militia myth". See: Canadian Units of the War of 1812 </P> <P> During the war, British officers constantly worried that the Americans would block the St. Lawrence River, which forms part of the Canada--U.S. border . If the U.S. military had done so, there would have been no British supply route for Upper Canada, where most of the land battles took place, and British forces would likely have had to withdraw or surrender all western British territory within a few months . British officers' dispatches after the war exhibited astonishment that the Americans never took such a simple step, but the British were not willing to count on the enemy repeating the mistake: as a result, Britain commissioned the Rideau Canal, an expensive project connecting Kingston, on Lake Ontario, to the Ottawa River, providing an alternative supply route that bypassed the part of the St. Lawrence River along the U.S. border . The settlement at the northeastern end of the canal, where it joins the Ottawa River, later became the city of Ottawa, Canada's fourth - largest city and its capital (placed inland to protect it from U.S. invasion--known then as the' defensible back - country'). Because population away from the St. Lawrence shores was negligible, the British, in the years following the war, took great lengths to ensure that back - country settlement was increased . They settled soldiers and initiated assisted - immigration schemes, offering free land to farmers, mostly tenants of estates in the south of Ireland . The canal project was not completed until 1832 and was never used for its intended purpose . </P>

At the end of the war of 1812 the us had