US Invasion of Canada

In an actual war plan drawn up in the 1930's known as "War Plan Red" (obsoleted in 1939 and declassified in 1974), US military strategists planned to invade Canada. The scenario goes:

• A joint Army-Navy overseas force to captures the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.
• US forces seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.
• The U.S. Army invades on three fronts -- marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.
• The U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports.

On the other hand, Canadian military strategists developed a similar plan to invade the United States in 1921 -- nine years before their American counterparts created War Plan Red.

A noted Canadian psychologist and author conjectured whether Fort Drum, the huge Army base in Upstate New York was a staging ground for a US invasion. "Why would the Americans put an Army base in such a wretched, frigid wilderness? he wondered. Could it be there to . . . fight Canada?"

In 1935, the largest peacetime manuevers occurred at Fort Drum and surrounding areas. Approximately 36,500 soldiers came from throughout the Northeast to take part in war games.

The dream of invading Canada lives on in the American psyche, occasionally manifesting itself in bizarre ways. Movies and cartoons for instance like Canadian Bacon (1995) starring Alan Alda and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999).




Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Drum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901412.html