that mythical cow
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
You’ve probably heard about the cow… The one Laura Secord was supposed to have dragged across enemy lines en route to warn Colonel Fitzgibbon? As if. No doubt she milked a few in her day, but the woman wasn’t remotely daft enough to drag a slow-moving, cud-chewing bovine over the Niagara escarpment. Really. That was a bit of fiction invented by historian and government official William E. Coffin. Apparently he claimed Laura milked the cow in order to persuade an American sentry to let her pass. (Yes, I know it sounds implausible, even two centuries later.) The trouble seems to be that, Laura – a woman of admirable discretion and humility – declined to boast of her exploits immediately after the fact for reasons of national and – no doubt – personal security. She only wrote of her pivotal role in the affair many years later when seriously pressed by financial circumstance (she was a widow; she was poor; plus ca change…) This caused some historians to question the legitimacy of her claims, never mind the military documents that backed them up. A woman? Save Canada?! Fortunately, the sisterhood took up her cause, the record was corrected, and monuments laid. The rest, as I wish they would say, is chocolate.