Prime Minister Mark Carney stunned some Canadian historians over the weekend when he released a pointed video message about the U.S. featuring a War of 1812 general who led the charge against the American invaders of that era.
For the first time Sunday, Carney publicly disclosed that he takes daily inspiration from Sir Isaac Brock, a foundational figure in Canadian history who expertly prepared Upper Canada for a possible U.S. invasion and then defended the territory against the marauding American forces when they eventually marched north.
A spokesperson for Carney said comedian Mike Myers gifted him a figurine of the general during the last election — the day they filmed that now infamous “elbows up” campaign commercial — and Carney, a history buff, has since given it a prominent place on his desk at 80 Wellington St.
In his video, Carney said he looks to that likeness of a “hero who fought and gave his life for our forebears” while carrying out his prime ministerial duties, much of which involve dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war and its fallout.
“This statue of Gen. Brock that I see every morning in the Prime Minister’s Office reminds me that when we’re united as Canadians, we can withstand anything,” he said, referencing Brock’s prowess in uniting English, French and Indigenous peoples to stop a U.S. takeover — something American Thomas Jefferson overconfidently and wrongly predicted would be “a mere matter of marching.”
“Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become our weaknesses — weaknesses that we must correct,” Carney said of the country’s overreliance on the U.S.
A senior government official, speaking to CBC News on the condition that they not be named, said Carney deliberately featured Brock in his first of what’s expected to be a series of videos about the country’s challenges because the general is a reminder that Canadians have taken on the Americans before, “and we can do it again.”
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In his own video response to Carney on Monday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre mocked the Brock figurine and the prime minister’s tough talk about the U.S.
“He recycled the same promises and reused the same old lines — this time with a little more dramatic flair,” he said. “He wants to distract from his costly failures by pushing fear.”
Guy St-Denis, one of the country’s top scholars on Brock and the author of The True Face of Sir Isaac Brock, said the prime minister’s invocation of this particular military leader offers crucial insight into how Carney views the current fight with the Americans.
“It’s about as warlike as a Canadian prime minister can get,” St-Denis said in an interview. “For a prime minister to pick up Sir Isaac Brock at this particular juncture in our relationship with the U.S. — it’s quite incredible.”
St-Denis said Brock was a genuine hero who helped preserve what was then Upper Canada, paving the way for a separate and distinct country on the northern half of the continent.
Recalling Brock’s early 19th-century heroics suggests Carney is steeling himself for what could be an ugly economic battle ahead with the Americans, St-Denis said.
“Almost nobody thought we could fight against the overwhelming population and strength of the United States — but Brock did,” he said.
“Brock gave Canadians hope that they could stand together and fight this threat from the United States. To me, this era is a shade of 1812. We’re dealing with a similar situation 210 years later. The prime minister clearly sees this parallel. This is a jab at the Americans,” St-Denis said.
The Channel Islands-born general, who served in other parts of the British Empire before being dispatched to Canada in 1802, held both civilian and military roles while he was here.
Brock, a soldier-scholar who combined strategy with battlefield bravado, whipped local militias into shape well before the war started, standing up a fighting force that had been poorly trained and ill-equipped before he arrived. Many of his troops were American-born Loyalist refugees who fled north after the chaotic Revolutionary War.
Vastly outnumbered, Brock and his forces subsequently captured swaths of U.S. territory including Detroit shortly after the conflict kicked off.
He skillfully forged alliances with local Indigenous peoples, including celebrated Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, who later proved critical in helping drive out the Americans and ending their annexationist quest.
“Preparation,” Brock once wrote, “is not the enemy of bravery. It is the foundation of it.”
After early success, Brock was tragically killed at the Battle of Queenston Heights in the first year of the war.
That battle would be crucial though, because it ended in a British victory, stymieing American territorial ambitions in the Niagara region and giving the local forces a fighting chance against an opponent that was, on paper, supposedly superior.
“The big thing about Isaac Brock, of course, is that he wasn’t daunted by the terrible odds against him, took the initiative at Mackinac and Detroit, and changed the whole dynamic of the War of 1812 in its early months by convincing people, at a critical time, that it was possible to defend Canada successfully,” Carl Benn, a professor of history at Toronto Metropolitan University, told CBC News.
“There were bleak periods afterwards, but in the end Britain achieved its primary goal of fighting a successful defensive war against the United States. The greatest outcome of the conflict was the survival of British North America. The Canadian experiment in building a North American society was not brought to a violent and early end through American conquest, but continued.”
Arthur Milnes, a political historian and an ex-speechwriter to former prime minister Stephen Harper, said so many Canadians know little of the country’s history.
While a giant in that context, Brock remains an obscure figure for many Canadians, and that’s an indictment of the school system and the curriculum that’s taught, Milnes said in an interview.
Milnes said Carney’s invocation of Brock, the Plains of Abraham and the country’s royal ties is an effort to inject the past into the present and revive a part of Canadian identity that had gone dormant before this trade war.
“Brock gave his life for us. We wouldn’t have a country without him,” Milnes said. “Carney is using every lever that we have, and an important lever is our history. And Brock is a reminder that Canada can triumph, Canada can succeed and, above all else, Canada is worth fighting for.”
