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The Battle of New Orleans (8 January 1815) has the unique distinction of being the last major battle of the War of 1812; it took place after the war was officially over.

During the WAR OF 1812, British troops led by Lieutenant General Sir George PREVOST conducted a raid on Sackets Harbor, NY, having learned that the American naval squadron was at the western end of Lake Ontario supporting an American army in the NIAGARA PENINSULA.

The Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) were a series of wars between France and shifting alliances between other European powers.

Privateering refers to government licensing of private vessels to wage war. In Canada, privateering dated back to Samuel Argall's attack in 1613 on PORT-ROYAL, Acadia. From 1756 to 1815 British privateers sailed from Halifax, Liverpool and other Atlantic ports, cruising as far south as Venezuela.

HMS Shannon and the USS Chesapeake fought one of the most celebrated naval battles of the WAR OF 1812. On 1 June 1813, the two ships met 20 nautical miles (37 km) east of Boston lighthouse, between Cape Ann and Cape Cod.

The war on the water was an essential, if not the most important, aspect of the WAR OF 1812. Great Britain was obviously at a disadvantage geographically when trying to defend its colony Canada in a conflict with the United States.

Battle of Lundy's Lane National Historic Site marks the 25 July 1814 Battle of Lundy's Lane, the fiercest and bloodiest land action during the War of 1812.

First Skirmish at Lacolle Mill, 1812 This brief skirmish at Lacolle Mill (now Lacolle, Que) during the War of 1812 marked the end of the American campaign to invade Lower Canada and take Montréal in the fall of 1812.

The Battle of Plattsburgh (also known as the Battle of Lake Champlain) was a joint land and naval invasion of upper New York State and the last major British operation of the War of 1812 (not including the battles after the Treaty of Ghent), and is largely remembered as a debacle.

Defence research, initiation and development of weapons or technologies likely to be useful in national defence, is a comparatively recent phenomenon in Canada.

​On 25 July 2014, Canada marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, one of the bloodiest battles of the War of 1812. The first milestone commemoration was held in 1914, when, just days before the start of the First World War, crowds of people gathered to celebrate 100 years of peace.

The Canadian Corps, a force of 100,000 soldiers by late 1916, fought for the entire war on the Western Front, along a static trench system that ran 700 kilometres from Switzerland to the North Sea.

The Battle of Courcelette, or the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, was part of the Somme offensive during the First World War. The Battle of Courcelette was fought from 15 to 22 September 1916. It resulted in thousands of battlefield casualties, but also signalled the start of new thinking in military tactics that would eventually solve the riddle of the trenches and help turn the tide of the war. Tanks were used in battle for the first time during the Battle of Courcelette as well as the creeping artillery barrage.

The Battle of Paardeberg was the first time men in Canadian uniform, fighting in a Canadian unit, made war overseas. It also inspired one of the first remembrance ceremonies in Canada: from 1900 until the end of the First World War, Canadians gathered not on November 11, but on February 27 — Paardeberg Day — to commemorate the country’s war dead and its achievements in South Africa (see also Remembrance Day in Canada).

Canada’s war of independence was the First World War. Unlike the Americans, our war of independence was not fought against the country from which we became independent, but alongside it. We started the war as a colony of Britain and ended it as an ally. The remarkable performance of the Canadian Corps and its first Canadian commander made these gains in autonomy possible.

HMCS ​Chicoutimi is one of four used submarines Canada purchased from Britain in the late 1990s.

​HMCS Kootenay was a destroyer in the Canadian Navy. In 1969, an accident at sea killed 9 sailors and injured 53 others. It was the worst peacetime disaster in the history of the navy.

The War of 1812 was fought between Britain and the United States between 1812 and 1814. The war ended in a stalemate but had many lasting effects in Canada. It guaranteed Canada’s independence from the United States. It also gave Canadians their first experience working together as a community and helped develop a sense of nationhood.

(This article is a plain-language summary of the War of 1812. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry War of 1812.)