Canada Has Been Fending Off The Americans For More Than 250 Years

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Editor’s note: If you enjoy this article, check out Madelaine Drohan’s book He Did Not Conquer: Benjamin Franklin’s Failure To Annex Canada to learn even more!

There was a time when Donald Trump’s jibes about making Canada the 51^st state were dismissed in Canada as typical bombast from the American president, a pressure tactic, perhaps, in ongoing trade negotiations.[i] This was before he told his top military leaders annexation would “make a lot of sense,”[ii] before he reasserted a 19^th-century claim to hemispheric dominance in his National Security Strategy,[iii] and before his bellicose speech at Davos, Switzerland, about his right to buy or annex Greenland.[iv] Prior to his appearance, he posted a fake map on social media showing both Canada and Greenland covered by an American flag.[v]

Canada had shifted course even before Prime Minister Mark Carney told that same Davos crowd that Canada stands with Greenland and Denmark in the battle with Trump. Government ministers who initially called Trump’s comments “silly talk,” now take him seriously. The Canadian military is reportedly exploring how it would react to an American invasion.[vi]

Yet underneath this belated recognition of reality lies a lingering sense of shock and disbelief in Canada that a country seen as a best friend and neighbour for almost a century has turned hostile. Perhaps we are shocked because we have forgotten that the largely Catholic French-speaking inhabitants in Canada and the largely Protestant, English-speaking inhabitants in what is now the United States were at war with each other on and off for centuries. It must have slipped our collective mind that America’s first war of liberation (which failed) was the invasion of the British colony of Canada at the start of the American Revolution. And we failed to see that the United States would turn its gaze north and south after it had expanded as far west as it could go by annexing, purchasing, or negotiating for the territory, including chunks of Canada and Mexico.

Co-operative and mostly cordial bilateral relations since the Second World War lulled Canadians into thinking that this was the new norm. It looks increasingly like an aberration. Understanding how Canada survived past threats and invasions is helpful up to a point. There are lessons to be learned. But the world and Canada’s place in it have changed, making many of those lessons outdated.

A long history of threats

The earliest attacks on Canada by Britain and her colonists have the least to tell us because both the French colony of New France or Canada and the British colonies to the south were subject to the whims and orders of imperial powers on the other side of the Atlantic. There were determined assaults on Canada or strategic parts of it in 1629, 1690, 1711, 1745, and 1754. The last was at the start of the French and Indian War in North America, fought by colonial and imperial troops on both sides. When it ended in 1763, Canada became a British colony.

Peace between the British colony of Canada and the British-American colonies prevailed until 1775, the start of the American Revolution. Among their many grievances with Britain, American colonists objected to the Quebec Act of 1774, which allowed the French Canadians to practise Catholicism and retain French civil law except in criminal cases. The clergy and seigneurs were allowed to carry on as before, including collecting tithes. The Act also restored the borders of Canada to those of the former New France, which included land south of the Great Lakes. This angered the American colonists and land speculators who coveted that land.

When the American founding fathers issued their ringing Declaration of Independence in July 1776, they were still licking their wounds from the humiliating failure of an invasion of Canada, begun in September 1775. Delegates to the Continental Congress had believed a rumour that Britain was about to launch an attack from the north. The British might have liked to do so, but they had less than 600 regular soldiers fit for duty in all of Canada, not enough to protect the colony let alone attack. Much like the Chinese and Russian warships Mr. Trump claims are surrounding Greenland,[vii] the imminent British attack existed mainly in the minds of the men with the power to launch an invasion.

The American invaders told the French Canadians they had come to free them from the tyranny of British rule but failed to persuade them to join the American Revolution. Had the estimated 65,000 to 100,000 French Canadians risen against the British, Canada would have become the 14^th colony. (There were only about 2,000 English speakers in the colony at the time.) The other reasons for failure included poor planning, bad intelligence, a lack of men, money, and resources, and because the Continental Congress was too distracted by other matters to focus on the war in Canada. American negotiators did secure the land south of the Great Lakes in subsequent peace negotiations.

Yet the idea that the rest of Canada should be part of the United States did not disappear. Several plans for another attempt were drawn up and then dismissed during the American Revolution. Battles closer to home took precedence. It was not until the War of 1812 that the American army crossed the border to Canada again. Historians differ about whether this was a serious attempt at conquest or a way of forcing Britain, still the colonial master, to stop snatching former British sailors off American ships and to remove its troops from forts now on American territory.

The generals leading the charge certainly spoke like would-be conquerors. General Alexander Smyth told his men in northern New York that “You will enter a country that is to be as one with the United States.”[viii] The British also thought the Americans were intent on annexation. In the end, it was another failed invasion. The peace treaty signed in 1814 left the borders where they were at the start of the war, allowing both sides to claim victory.[ix]

There have been plenty of scares since, but no full-scale invasion.

In the 1840s, the Americans openly talked about their manifest destiny to control North America. It looked like there would be an armed struggle between Britain and the United States over the jointly-administered Oregon Country, which stretched from Mexico’s northern border to the southern tip of Russian Alaska at 54 degrees 40 minutes latitude.[x] James Polk had won the presidency amid chants of “Fifty-four forty or fight.”[xi] He pushed the idea in negotiations with Britain, but eventually settled for a border along the 49^th parallel. He and the congress wanted to concentrate on winning the war with Mexico over territory now covered by the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.[xii]

The end of the civil war in the United States in 1865 brought on a new bout of jitters in Canada. Would the heavily armed Americans turn north after the fighting ended at home? In some accounts, this threat accelerated plans for Confederation in Canada in 1867. Canada had allowed Confederates to take refuge and even launch the odd attack from its soil, which could have been used as a pretext. But American politicians were preoccupied with the reconstruction of their country and the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Canada would remain a piece of unfinished business.

There were other attacks on Canada in this period by groups such as the Fenian Brotherhood, who wanted to weaken Britain’s defences against an Irish uprising, by diverting some of its troops to Canada. These were not officially sanctioned. And there were isolated calls from politicians at the state and federal level to annex Canada or parts of it, especially during the Red River Resistance of 1869-1870.[xiii] This was an uprising by farmers, hunters, and Métis, who feared they would be harmed by the transfer of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada. The Minnesota state legislature wanted the United States to step in and annex the territory between Minnesota and Alaska.

The last time the Canadian government actively prepared for a war with the United States was in 1895, when President Grover Cleveland threatened to attack over an obscure border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana. It was resolved before any fighting took place. Canada, while no longer a colony, was part of the British Empire, making it an attractive target for presidential ire.

At any time since the birth of the United States, the Americans have had the means and the ability to conquer Canada. That remains true today. The American military, with about 1.3 million active-duty personnel[xiv] and a further 760,000 in their national guard and various military reserves,[xv] is larger and better armed than the Canadian Forces, which have about 65,000 active-duty personnel and 23,500 in the primary reserves.[xvi] One expert noted recently there were only sufficient Canadian Forces to protect a city the size of Kingston, Ontario.[xvii]

A review of past threats and invasions suggest two main reasons why the United States failed to conquer Canada or did not follow through on threats. The first was the looming presence of Britain, whose military led the defence during the invasions of 1775-76 and 1812. The United States was leery of tangling with Britain’s military and feared a conflict would sever important trade connections with Britain.

Distraction was the other main reason. The United States would like to have Canada, but it wanted other things more. In 1775-76, it diverted men, money, clothing, and other supplies meant for its soldiers in Canada to those fighting near Boston and New York City. Defeating the British closer to home was the priority. In the War of 1812, the United States probably would have kept Canada if it conquered it, but the priority was getting the British to hand over forts on American territory and leaving former British sailors on American ships alone. In the 1840s, California and northern Mexico beckoned, so the demand for the entire Oregon Country was dropped.

Canada’s best hope if an invasion were threatened today is that the Trump administration becomes distracted by something more important to its existence. There is a long list of possibilities, including a surge in domestic unrest over the tactics of immigration officials in places like Minnesota; an implosion of the AI industry and accompanying stock market crash; or a trade war with Europe that savages the American economy. These are not to be hoped for but any one of them would put annexing Canada on the back burner.

Distraction is not a strategy, but it just might work in the short-term.

[i] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-poilievre-leader-briefing-mar-a-lago-1.7399534 and https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/canadians-dismiss-us-annexation-unlikely-happen and https://globalnews.ca/news/10899148/trump-trudeau-meeting-51st-state-canada/

[ii] Trump comments to the military, September 30, 2025

[iii] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

[iv] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-51st-state-again-1.7647268

[v] https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/trump-shares-altered-map-of-us-flag-covering-canada-greenland-and-venezuela/

[vi] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-military-models-canadian-response-to-hypothetical-american-invasion/

[vii] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/nordics-reject-trumps-claim-chinese-russian-ships-around-greenland-ft-reports-2026-01-11/ and https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/trump-greenland-logic-chaos/

[viii] See page 3 at https://brocku.scholaris.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/2f51c0c6-af82-4156-8361-1af620f93e99/content and also https://brocku.scholaris.ca/items/734f1f79-139b-495e-9def-1384e19de1be/full

[ix] https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/treaty-of-ghent

[x] https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/oregon-territory

[xi] https://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/borders/essay3.html