If only an army officer with a taste for curios hadn’t sent an Upper Canadian government clerk a scalp in the mail.
According to an account recorded by 19th century local political activist Robert Gourlay, the legislators who received the scalp and its accompanying letter were not amused by their “present” and tossed it aside. Legend has it that during the siege of York in late April 1813, a group of invading American sailors found the scalp hanging like a trophy inside one of the Ontario parliament buildings, at the southeast corner of Front and Berkeley streets. The sailors were offended by what appeared to be an act of British barbarism committed against an unfortunate countryman. Though it’s possible that orders came from above, the most likely scenario is that the sailors acted like unhappy Vancouver hockey fans and torched the joint (which we avenged by torching Washington, D.C. the following year).