The Fenians: Brotherhood of Fools or Canada's First Terrorist Threat

Canadians are taught to remember the War of 1812 as the defining moment when our territory was threatened from the south. Far less well known is a second, very real challenge to Canada's security that unfolded only decades later-after Confederation-when Irish-American militants launched a series of cross-border raids in an attempt to pressure Britain into granting independence to Ireland.

Between 1866 and 1871, members of the Fenian movement-many of them veterans of the American Civil War-be...