Southpoint Sun - March 3, 2021

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Southpoint Sun - 7

This week marks 183 years since Battle of Pelee Island PELEE ISLAND — Leamington resident Margaret Quick Ardiel was recently looking through a book that belonged to her grandfather, Claude Quick, who was born on Pelee Island in 1885. The book was called ‘Sketches and Stories of The Lake Erie Islands — 1813-1913’ and she noticed that an ‘anniversary’ of sorts was occurring this week. After the War of 1812 had long been settled, a little-known battle occurred across a frozen Lake Erie, when a group of American and Canadian men calling themselves ‘Patriots’, invaded the Great Lakes region, then known as Upper Canada. When William McCormick moved his family of eleven to ‘Pt. Au Pelee’ Island in 1834, he settled along the north shore bluffs with a small frame building nestled between two log cabins. It was here that he would later build a dock and get to know the island’s tenants — the Allan, Butler and Fox families.

McCormick had purchased the island in 1823, and by the time he settled there, the only place to put a road was along the shoreline. At the time, he described visible signs of elk and deer populations and an island teeming with muskrats, which were trapped and speared by both white men and natives. The McCormicks farmed the land and erected a sawmill in 1836, which proved lucrative for the Pelee Islanders. According to the book, the peaceful existence of Pelee Island changed suddenly in early March of 1838, when organized rebels, known as ‘Patriots’, invaded the small island. Some 450 of them had gathered on Fighting Island, in the Detroit River and then descended upon Pelee, where they plundered residents and belongings there. It was their intent to capture William McCormick, a former member of the Canadian Parliament. The McCormicks had somehow received word of the impending in-

This 1977 painting by C.H. Forster depicts the Battle of Pelee Island in 1838. Credit: Fort Malden NHSC

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vasion and packed up as much as they could carry, crossing the frozen Lake Erie ice to the Canadian mainland. They got word to Fort Malden, where Lieutenant Colonel John Maitland gathered three companies of soldiers to respond. On the evening of March 2, 1838, British troops, local militia men and dozens of natives met near Colchester and, after checking the ice for stability, crossed the ice on foot toward the island, with two cannons in tow. The next morning at daybreak, the locals and British made landfall at Pelee Island, where, after a few skirmishes with Patriot forces, drove the Patriots off the island and restored some sense of calm. Ten Patriots were killed in the battle, including their leader. After they retreated across to Sandusky, they were forced to surrender their arms to U.S. authorities. Skirmishes like the Battle of Pelee Island occurred up and down the Great Lakes region in the following years but the rebels never got a foothold on either side, sealing local history and keeping the peninsula of southwestern Ontario truly Canadian. The Patriot War ended later that year, with one final fight at the Battle of Windsor, and although there were uprisings later in the 1800s, life settled down for the people of Essex, Kent and Pelee Island. As for the McCormicks, they returned to Pelee Island about a year later, where they made a permanent residence. William McCormick saw that each of his eleven children received parcels of land before he died in 1840, but his swift actions 183 years ago this week, cemented the history of Pelee Island and it’s long list of future inhabitants.

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Margaret Quick-Ardiel’s book was handed down from her grandfather, who was born and raised on Pelee Island.

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