From the original British gun positions at the fort’s southeast
bastion, you can look across to Buffalo, N.Y., as the narrowing
lake turns into the Niagara River. Even now, it doesn’t take
much imagination to understand just how strategically important
the place had been two centuries ago. But it’s the view to the
west — across what’s now verdant parkland — that really
intrigues John Triggs, chair of the department of archeology at
Wilfrid Laurier University. It’s there that secrets lay buried.
In the summer and fall of 1814, this was the scene of a long and
bloody battle with roughly 1,500 casualties, much of it played
out along a 700-metre stretch of earthworks that the invading
Americans had constructed westward from the fort itself, which
they by then possessed. Read more.