Discover Toronto's history as told through its plaques

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The Defence of York

Photo by Alan L Brown - Posted September, 2006

Photo by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted October, 2012

At the south end of the former Ontario Government building (now the Liberty Grand) at Exhibition Place, is this Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada plaque commemorating those who fell during a battle to defend Toronto in 1813. It reads as follows:

Coordinates: 43.630581 -79.426410

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Pro Patria. In memory of Captain Neal McNeal, Volunteer Donald Maclean, and the soldiers of the Royal Artillery, 8th Regiment, Royal Newfoundland Regiment, Glengarry Light Infantry, York and Durham Militia, and Indians, killed in action, and their comrades who fought here, facing fearful odds, in defence of the Capital of Upper Canada, 27th April, 1813.

Another plaque at this location
Marilyn Bell

Related webpages
Upper Canada
War of 1812

More
Conflict

Here are the visitors' comments for this page.

> Posted January 30, 2013
I believe that this plaque places the death of the gallant Captain McNeal (var. McNeil), who commanded the grenadier company, 8th (Kings) Regiment, at the wrong spot. He was reportedly killed at Wolfe's Cove (the spit of land which terminated at modern Sunnyside) after leading a bayonet charge down the gullied hill to the west of modern Ducks Pond to drive the landing Americans off the end of that spit. His body was later, by the command of Major Winniett of the 68th Regiment, reinterred (the lake having made later inroads on the bank in which the Americans had there buried him) at the Garrison Burial Ground on May 9th, 1829, with full military honours.

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