I am going to stay out of this, living as I do just a spit across the St Mary's River from our twin city of Sault Ste. Marie. Just a little mention though about things regarding the 2nd Amendment. There are no more stout defenders of the keeping of firearms (long guns) than Canadian gun owners.
On the lighter side, we in Canada had a new statutory holiday enacted. Family Day and all the stores had to close. Ere' arf the bloomin' population took off over the bridge to go to Walmart in Michigan. (Ok an exaggeration) but it seemed like it.
On the 1812-1814 war between Canada and America. Americans generally claim they won. Canadians claim they won. The British whose Redcoats were employed, claim that war ended in a draw.
Draw it was.
Given that Canada was invaded by a much larger, apparently ‘professional’ American Army, that the British military was tied down with the Napoleonic wars in Europe, and that it was mostly Canadian militia and First Nations that defended Canada, and that the invasion was defeated, then yes, it was a VICTORY for Canada, even though in the end, no land was gained or lost by either side. It established a Canadian identity, different from a ‘colonial’ identity.
Forgive the run-on sentence.
War of 1812.
USA by any reasonable military balance of power should have had a cakewalk taking Canada. Embarrassing performance by our Army allowed the Canadians and Brits to kick us out, then counter-invade. Stopped by our Navy.
The Navy performed astonishingly well at first considering the imbalance of power. But was finally swamped by numbers. Poor initial British naval performance was probably due largely to over-confidence induced by repeated victories over low morale and experience European navies. US Navy was an entirely different matter.
The British small-force raid that took DC was another huge failure by US government and military.
America won Battle of New Orleans, and allowed this to convince them they’d actually won the war. An embarrassing defeat for the British Army, and one of the worst in its long history. In their defense, they’d never run up against anybody like Jackson.
As you say, a draw by any reasonable standard.
The war was a victory for the U.S., because we showed the world we were a nation not to be trifled with. If we had lost, the U.S. would've been a small country on the eastern seaboard of the continent and would've never taken the immigrants we did. We'd have had European countries always in our business, messing with us.
As it is, the war opened up the west for us, and we took Europeans as immigrants, NOT as conquerors.