Experience historic fortifications and battlefields in Ontario

Head to the historical corridor from Windsor to the Niagara region in Ontario and discover unique activities and experiences related to the fortifications and battlefields of the War of 1812. Options for a day trip, overnight stay, or weekend getaway.

If you’re a day tripper

Your day adventure focuses on Fort Malden National Historic Site near Amherstburg, 28 km south of Windsor. The site commemorates both Fort Amherstburg and Fort Malden, which formed the British stronghold on the Detroit frontier during the War of 1812 and the Upper Canada Rebellions. Take part in the fort’s signature interpretive experience, the explosive might of a 19th-century Brown Bess musket.

If you’re an overnighter

Day 1: Visit Fort Malden National Historic Site, then take in the engaging exhibits at the nearby Park House Museum. Just 1.5 km from Fort Malden, the Amherstburg Freedom Museum preserves and presents stories and artifacts of African-Canadians, many of whose ancestors fled U.S. slavery.

Travel 98 km to Chatham-Kent and the site of The Battle of Moraviantown, a decisive American victory which resulted in the death of Tecumseh, an iconic war hero. Here, the Tecumseh Parkway follows the Thames River, tracing the battle sites that are marked with signage guiding you to 11 interpretive stops.

Day 2: Travel 26 km east to Thamesville, where Tecumseh Monument Park pays homage to its namesake with a statue, and is an ideal place to picnic. In just 8 km, visit the Fairfield on the Thames National Historic Site, a community destroyed by American forces following the Battle of Moraviantown.

Next, travel 83 km east to the Southwold Earthworks, near St. Thomas, where from 1500 to 1650, a village of as many as 24 longhouses was home to 800 to 900 Attiwandaron (Neutral Iroquois). Oral tradition within the local Oneida First Nation recounts that Southwold, enclosed by a palisade, was used as a seasonal ceremonial site for healing and purification.

If you’re a weekender

Day 1: Day one begins at Fort Malden, and includes visits to the Park House Museum and the Amherstburg Freedom Museum. Head to Chatham-Kent to visit the Battle of the Moraviantown and the Tecumseh Parkway.

Day 2: Your second day is dedicated to visiting the Tecumseh Monument Park, the Fairfield on the Thames National Historic Site, and the Southwold Earthworks. Drive 235 km east to the fortifications and battlefield sites located in the Niagara region.

Day 3: Start your day at Fort Mississauga National Historic Site, the only remaining military complex in Canada designed with a square tower within a star-shaped earthwork. Built between 1814-1816 to replace nearby Fort George as the counterpoise to the American Fort Niagara, it had various uses until the 1860s.

Just 2 km away, the War of 1812 comes to life at Fort George National Historic Site, with its restored powder magazine and other reconstructed buildings, military music of the 41st Fife and Drum Corps, musket demonstrations and ‘British soldiers’ talking about their families, and of May 27, 1813, the fateful day the fort fell to American forces.

Conclude at the Queenston Heights National Historic Site, commemorated by an extensive park on the Niagara escarpment (11 km from Fort George), the centrepiece of which is a 58-metre classical column containing the graves of Major General Sir Isaac Brock and Lt. Col. John Macdonell, Brock’s Provincial Aide-de-Camp. Near Brock’s Monument is the Landscape of Nations, a monument commemorating Indigenous contributions to the War of 1812.