Capital in Flames: The American Attack on York, 1813.

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

No study of a historical event that involved thousands, affected thousands more, and changed the course of our history can ever be called definitive, and Robert Malcomson would assuredly make no such claim for this book. It could, however, be as close to a definitive account as we may see of its subject: the invasion and brief occupation of York [Toronto] by American forces in 1813.

The author of several books about the War of 1812, Malcomson is both expert and passionate about his subject. For this study, he explored archives globally, and had access to family papers held by descendants from both sides as far afield as Australia. Nine appendices, a glossary, a bibliography, and more than 1,000 endnotes, many of them lengthy and intriguing, take about 160 pages, although the notes are in a painfully small font. Maps and illustrations enrich the book.

Events leading to the American landing are detailed and shown clearly in the wider political and social perspective. We meet participants on both sides, some well-known, others “new characters [who] contribute to the narrative.” The battle and the occupation are related in dramatic, meticulous detail, and several long-standing beliefs about that tumultuous week are exposed as myths of subsequent days, and even of subsequent generations. An account of the aftermath, including a second brief occupation of York by Americans later that year, is followed by a report on how the battle has since been commemorated. (Canadians may be surprised to learn that the capture of York is also considered a momentous day in American military history because it was the first time “that the U.S. army executed a combined operation with the U.S. Navy.”)

Appendices contain detailed studies of specific features of the invasion, from ordnance to the drafts of the terms of capitulation. Most remarkably, Malcomson has analyzed regimental pay records, muster rolls, and lists of casualties and prisoners, and “given the genealogists a new playing field” with the names, ranks, and fates where known, of more than a thousand soldiers, both British regulars and Canadian militia, and of the hundreds of American sailors involved.