Page:Brock centenary 2nd ed. 1913.djvu/67

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AT QUEENSTON HEIGHTS

from the Six Nations occupied a conspicuous place of honour most worthily, their presence recalling the signal service rendered by their brave forefathers at Queenston Heights and in the campaign generally. The military detachments added colour to the animated scene. The men of the Royal Canadian Regiment, of the Governor-General's Body Guard, of the Forty-eighth Highlanders, the Queen's Own, the Royal Grenadiers, the Mississauga Horse, the Ridley College Cadets, and of other corps, were drawn up on the outside of the crowd, and beyond them, on the escarpment, the St. Catharines' Battery, Field Artillery, was stationed. Over all floated the Union Jack.

An incident of the gathering in which much interest was shown was the unfurling of an old, historic Union Jack from the top of Brock's Monument by Miss Helen M. Merrill, Secretary of the Committee. When the first monument erected to Brock at Queenston was destroyed (17th April, 1840) a great indignation meeting was held on the Heights. Among those present was a British sailor from one of the ships that conveyed the Toronto people to the meeting. He had brought with him a Union Jack, and climbing to the top of the broken shaft, waved it aloft, amid the cheers of the assembled patriots. The flag was preserved, and Mr. Comer, Kingston, Ont., readily loaned it for this special occasion. Accompanying Miss Merrill to the top of the monument with the flag were Misses Marjorie FitzGibbon and Laura Brodigan and Mr. Allen W. Johnson (Six Nations).

Several relics of the War of 1812-14 were shown by their possessors, who held them sacred, among them a Union Jack, carried by Chief Paudash (Johnson) of the Mississauga Indians, from the Ontario Archives Department; early sketches of the Queenston battlefield, and pictures of officers who took part in the war.


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