this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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When the White House was burned down, there wasn't really a Canada yet. There were multiple different British colonies to the north of the US, but they didn't consider themselves to be a countries at that point in time.
Also, the burning of the Washington was a response to the American burning of York (now Toronto) a year earlier. That was seen as a war crime, because you didn't torch civilian infrastructure during a war, at least not on purpose. When the British took Washington, they could have burned the whole thing down, but even though they were taking revenge for the Americans burning and looting York, they held back and only burned government buildings.