20 Legacy

20

LEGACY

on june 1, 1876, the new cAnAdiAn militAry college opened on Point Frederick. The event was informal. The recruits came to the west entrance of the Stone Frigate, having been instructed to report between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. After an initial greeting, they were each enrolled, shown their rooms on the upper floors, and then brought down to meet LieutenantColonel Edward Osborne Hewett, the commandant. The event was quiet and without pomp. After noon, the new recruits gathered to meet the captain of cadets for lunch. Later that evening, Hewett gave a dinner for some prominent citizens of Kingston to mark the occasion.1

There were 18 cadets in the first year. The entire college, including dormitory rooms and classrooms, was contained within the Stone Frigate. To make the old storehouse suitable, the building had been emptied of all supplies. Forty carpenters then went to work demolishing the interior and constructing new rooms and facilities. Commodore Sandom’s fine office panelling and the wood finish in the officer cabins were pulled out. The surviving remnants of the dining room, officers’ mess, and sailors’ berths were carted out. In their place, the interior of the college was built. A new dining room, kitchen facilities, and storerooms were installed in the basement. Administrative offices and classrooms were built on the ground floor. Cadet rooms and a washroom were located on the first floor, and 24 more cadet rooms were constructed on the top floor. Illumination was by kerosene

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lamp.2 The circular centre stairway, described by Captain Ballingall in 1841, remained.

To accommodate sports and military activities, the 1815 blacksmith shop was turned into a gymnasium and drill shed. Removing the old HMS Niagara yard fence and filling and levelling of the grounds allowed a parade square to be laid out between the Stone Frigate and gymnasium. The campus was enclosed by the stone perimeter wall, which functioned adequately but needed repair. At the dockyard gate, the porter’s lodge became the RMC guardhouse. There were plans to bring in soil and plant trees to beautify the grounds.

When the college opened, most remaining Royal Navy buildings were gone. These included the mould loft, the wharf blockhouse, the officers’ house, the paint shop and storehouse, coal and metal shops, privies, sheds, old stables, pumps, wharfs, well houses, and Fort Frederick palisade fence. The old Provincial Marine wharf was derelict, a few boards protruding above the surface of the water. Dozens of cannons and shot had been removed from the grounds the previous winter using sleighs. The burned-out naval cottages, an ugly ruin for many years, were finally pulled down. The remaining cottages were renovated for use. The Admiralty House and its many outbuildings had been knocked down the year before and the site cleared and levelled.

Classes began in the Stone Frigate, and the college soon began to grow. Construction of an education facility (Mackenzie Building) started the next year as more cadets arrived. In addition to providing leadership to the staff and cadets, Hewett administered the expansion and was continually in contact with Ottawa and senior militia officers. With the prospect of more cadets who would be the officers to develop the future military, it fell to Hewett to define traditions and the principles that would guide them. In the words of Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie, “The founding of the college was in fact laying the foundation of a future national military system….”3

The early values, traditions, and heritage of the Royal Military College derived from the British Army. Hewett, a Royal Engineer, set the tone by his personal example and through his staffing, orders, and regulations. A gifted artist, he personally designed and drew the college crest, which consisted of “a mailed arm bearing a maple leaf.” This crest was printed on the first graduation certificates. It has been on all that followed. Hewett was the first to use the term gentlemen-cadets, which in the present day is lady- and gentlemen-cadets. It was also Hewett who approved the college motto “Truth, Duty,

legAcy

Valour.”4 He was an early advocate for granting RMC graduates commissions in the British Army. In 1878, he recommended that the college be named the Royal Military College of Canada.

Despite the rich naval history of Point Frederick, for many years there was only cursory acknowledgement of the naval legacy of the peninsula. It was known there had been a dockyard, but there was little recognition of the deeper history and no sense of naval tradition. This would be expected, since the RMC was an army college. Nevertheless, there was an irony. Hewett’s father, Lieutenant John Hewett, was a Royal Marine stationed at Point Frederick in 1814.5 Lieutenant Hewett was with a Royal Marine battalion during the attack on Oswego on May 5, 1814. He faced heavy fire while running uphill toward the ramparts of the fort and was among the first to get over the top and enter the bastion. Lieutenant Hewett climbed the flagstaff while under fire, being shot three times, but pulled down the American flag, which had been nailed to the post. This was probably the flag Yeo flew under his pennant when he returned to Navy Bay after the battle.6

Surely, the example of his father was a perfect illustration of the RMC motto, something Hewett must have thought about. But the RMC was not then a naval college, and it would be 80 more years before naval traditions became important.

The Naval Service of Canada, later the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), was created on May 4, 1910, as an entity distinct from the Royal Navy. Before that time, there was no formal Canadian navy, although Canadians did serve in the Royal Navy and Provincial Marine. From its beginning, naval cadets were trained on naval bases and on board ships, usually with the Royal Navy. RMC graduates were mostly army officers, although prior to the Second World War, there were a few who became naval officers. At the RMC, the obvious symbol of the early navy past was the Stone Frigate, which was seized upon in 1940 when a visiting class of naval officers designated it the HMCS Stone Frigate. 7

The RMC policy changed after 1950 when naval cadets transferred into the third year of study after two years at the Canadian Forces Service College Royal Roads in Victoria. The inclusion of naval cadets was made particularly poignant when, in 1957, Commodore Desmond Piers, RCN, became the RMC commandant. Piers became the first officer at Point Frederick with the title of commodore since the departure of Commodore Williams Sandom a century before.

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Since the arrival of naval cadets, the focus of naval tradition has been on the Stone Frigate, which is still referred to in terms of “decks” and “cabins,” reminiscent of the days of HMS Niagara. But notably, naval traditions that are observed in the RCN do not relate to events on Lake Ontario. Trafalgar Day, which recognizes Lord Nelson’s Royal Navy victory over the French and Spanish fleets in 1805, was long recognized by the RCN as a great Royal Navy victory, although the day now commemorates the arrival of the first RCN ship, HMS Niobe. But there has been no formal observance of the sailing of the St. Lawrence fleet in 1814, which may well have determined the future size, shape, and existence of Canada. And there is little acknowledgement of the role of the Provincial Marine in the preservation and early development of Canada.

The principal legacy of the Royal Navy on Lake Ontario is the denial of American control of the lake at a critical time. The signal result was peace, independence, and the early beginnings of the world’s longest undefended border. This important legacy also belongs to the Provincial Marine, the French-Canadian and Loyalist shipbuilders, the brigades of bateaux men who brought supplies along the St. Lawrence River, and the men and women who supported them.

The Provincial Marine was an early kind of national navy. It was armed and its authority derived from the head of the country, the governor general. As such, it is a historic precursor of the Royal Canadian Navy. Although most of the officers left the service when the Royal Navy arrived, more than 70 Provincial Marine seamen and shipwrights served on the lake during the War of 1812. The resources of the Point Frederick dockyard became those of the Royal Navy, a bridgehead toward an expanded yard. In denying the Americans control of Lake Ontario at a critical time, the Royal Navy accomplished its mission: the victory of repelling an invader had been achieved. This triumph was of lasting importance and critical to the future of Canada. It is no less a success for the Provincial Marine and is an important part of this historical legacy.

The recognition of this important history, a national achievement of both French and English on the site of an Indigenous campground, is a Point Frederick legacy that should be protected by Canadians, and by the officer and naval cadets who march along the shaded avenues of the Royal Military College of Canada.