Earlier this month, the Americans dedicated a new memorial on the shores of the Niagara River commemorating one of the last invasions of Canada to be launched from U.S. territory.

The Fenian invasion of 1866 monument marks the point from where approximately 1,000 Irish-American Fenian insurgents invaded the Fort Erie area intending to take Canada hostage in a campaign to force the British out of Ireland. The Fenian invasion culminated on June 2, 1866, with Canada’s first modern battle, the Battle of Ridgeway, our first fought in the age of telegraph and steam railroads.

Ridgeway was the first battle fought exclusively by Canadian soldiers and led entirely by Canadian officers — no British troops participated in the combat — and it was the last battle fought against foreign invaders in what would become Ontario.

It was also an unmitigated disaster when untested Canadian troops from Hamilton and Toronto, including two rifle companies of University of Toronto student volunteers, came up against battle-hardened Irish American Civil War veterans of the Fenian “Irish Republican Army” (IRA) — the first known use of that term.

After U.S. navy gunboats cut off Fenian supply lines across the Niagara River and as Canadian and British forces began to close in, the invaders withdrew to their base in Buffalo on June 3. Many on both sides of the border credit the Fenians with cementing Canadian nationhood. These include New York State Senator Timothy Kennedy, who led the campaign to raise the monument in Buffalo’s Tow Path Park, the Niagara riverside launching point for the incursion.

“The Fenian invasion has a unique place in Buffalo’s history,” he said. “The Fenian Brotherhood, battle-hardened American veterans, first fought to keep our nation united and strong in the Civil War. Then, by launching this invasion, they significantly contributed to the national independence of Canada and eventually Ireland. The Fenian invasion demonstrated that freedom and democracy are forces that no amount of oppression can stop. Even outnumbered and outgunned, the Fenians valiantly battled the British Crown forces. They played a pivotal role in Canada’s independence, and they helped inspire Irish freedom.”

While Americans celebrated the invasion of Canada and their role in the “national independence of Canada,” most Canadians have never heard of the Battle of Ridgeway, in which the first modern Canadian soldiers were killed: nine riflemen from one of Canada’s oldest continually serving military units, Toronto’s Queen’s Own Rifles Regiment (QOR). Three of the dead were U of T students plucked from their final exams and thrown into combat the next day.

Canada’s pre-Confederation local military defence was the responsibility of the colonial minister of militia and attorney general, John A. Macdonald, and the subsequent debacle threatened his confederation plans and his ambition to lead the future Dominion of Canada’s first government.

A cabal of politicians and prominent upper class volunteer militia officers conspired to cover up the disaster through a series of military boards of inquiry. They were so successful that to this day the transcripts of the testimony in one of the inquiries have never been published, while the Battle of Ridgeway, despite being so critical in Canada’s Confederation history, is the battle that most Canadians have never heard of. Ridgeway is not commemorated, its casualties are not recognized in our National Books of Remembrance and their gravestones (scattered across southern Ontario and in Toronto) do not have National War Grave status and are uncared for by the government. A private effort by veterans of the Queen’s Own Rifles recently restored the nine abandoned gravestones that had nearly vanished in the winds and rains of the last 146 years.

The same can be said for the battlefield in the village of Ridgeway near Fort Erie. It is vanishing as housing developments threaten to swallow up the unmarked historic site. Bob Dunk, president of the Queen’s Own Rifles Association of Canada, laments, “In the United States, every site of even the smallest skirmish in the Revolutionary War or Civil War is sacred ground, cared for and protected by the National Park Service as historic national sites. Yet the ground of Ridgeway, on which Canada’s first soldiers died, except for a tiny cairn and plaque in a small far and out-of-the-way corner, are forgotten and ignored.”

Yet there is hope that Canadians will come to restore the memory of our first casualties. While plaques in the Moss Park Armoury at Queen and Jarvis Streets in Toronto where the QOR is currently stationed commemorate soldiers from the regiment who fell in every conflict Canada fought in from South Africa to Korea (75 QOR recently served in Afghanistan without casualties), only this year will a plaque finally be unveiled in memory of the “Ridgeway Nine” — the first to fall for Canada — during the scheduled royal visit in May by Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who is currently the honourary commanding officer of the regiment.

Despite the focus on the bicentennial of the War of 1812, this year is appropriate for remembering the Battle at Ridgeway and the “last invasion” of Canada. June 2 falls on a Saturday this year, as did the battle in 1866. The town of Ridgeway, as part of its Ridgeway Reads literary festival, will be host to a conference of historians and the unveiling a new painting depicting the battle. And the QOR Association has petitioned Ontario Lieutenant Governor David Onley to help lobby Ottawa for official recognition of the “Ridgeway Nine.”

Peter Vronsky is a historian at Ryerson University and author of Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion and the 1866 Battle That Made Canada. His website on the Battle of Ridgeway is www.ridgewaybattle.ca