This month’s 200th anniversary of the start of the War of 1812 will be marked with a colossal bang: the television premiere of Explosion 1812, a new documentary that argues the intentional detonation of Upper Canada’s main ammunition supply at present-day Toronto in April 1813 — described as “one of the biggest explosions that had ever been witnessed in North America” — is a greatly underappreciated moment in history that was key to thwarting the U.S. conquest of Canada.
The two-hour, Canadian-made film — to be aired by History Television on June 17, the eve of the bicentennial of the formal U.S. declaration of war on June 18, 1812 — recounts how retreating British-Canadian troops at Fort York blew up the colony’s “grand magazine” along the Lake Ontario shore as American forces closed in on Upper Canada’s capital on April 27, 1813.
The storytelling is framed by an archeological search for traces of the explosion, including the enormous crater known to have been left when the military storehouse was blown up, along with its considerable contents: an estimated 14,000 kilograms of black powder, 10,000 cannon balls and 30,000 cartridges.
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War of 1812 explodes on TV,
