There Is a New Heritage Minute

(screams silently and then really loudly)

No, you don’t understand. It’s been almost ten years. Why?

“The short answer of why we haven’t made them before now is they cost a lot of money,” says Historica-Dominion Institute President Anthony Wilson-Smith.

Does the delightfully candid Wilson-Smith have more to tell us?

Richard Pierpoint was born in Bondu (now Senegal), captured and sold to a British officer in the U.S. as a slave at the age of 16 in 1760. He fought for the British in the American revolutionary war and then came to Upper Canada as a free man.

When the Americans invaded in 1812, men and women were lucky to live into their early 40s, but he was 68 years old and wanted to fight. He asked permission to form a regiment of “coloured” men, which was initially met with lukewarm enthusiasm, said Wilson-Smith.

“They don’t even give him permission as much as they say, kind of ‘whatever,’ and he goes out and finds other black former slaves, and the sons of slaves, and they formed an all-black regiment that fights for the British, on the Canadian side,” said Wilson-Smith.

So, next time you’re watching “The Patriot” on TNT, keep in mind that you might feel more sympathetic to Lucius Malfoy if he was actually Richard Pierpoint, and was all “yeah, yeah, evil King George, he sounds like a monster. Excuse me if IDGAK about your precious liberty, I’ll be over here, reasonably pursuing my own best interests.”

If you’d like to know more about him, here’s a decent place to start.