Many observers were surprised by the scope of the bicentennial celebrations of the war of 1812-1814 organized by the Conservative government. This paper approaches this enterprise as part of an attempt to reconstruct Canada’s national and international identity around a neoconservative and neocontinentalist world-view. However, an examination of the centennial celebration of this same war, scheduled for 1915, shows that the Harper government’s project is not unique and that this conflict has been previously reinterpreted in order to promote an alternative vision of Canada’s place in the world, this time around liberal values. Indeed, the plans laid out by the Canadian Peace Centenary Association aimed at celebrating the community of identity uniting the “English-speaking peoples” and the peace that North America experienced thanks to rational methods of conflict resolution, notably through a program of popular education. As such, the cpca was a vehicle for an alternative conception to the imperialist ideas that dominated at the time, and it prefigures the emergence of a more nationalist conception of Canada’s place in the world.