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Hwy 20 runs south from Windsor, slicing through the industrial region that edges the Detroit River, whose murky waters form the border with the US. The enmity of the Americans prompted the British to build a fort here, close to the mouth of the Detroit River at AMHERSTBURG in 1796, but it proved difficult to supply and they were forced to abandon the stockade during the War of 1812. Reoccupied after the war, the British made half-hearted attempts to improve the fort's defences, but it probably would have been abandoned had it not been for the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. In a panic, the colonial powers rebuilt what was now called Fort Malden and garrisoned it with four hundred soldiers, stationed here to counter the efforts of the insurgents and their American sympathizers. The last troops left in 1859 and the fort was handed over to the province, which turned it into a lunatic asylum. Renovated, the early nineteenth-century ditches and corner bastions of Fort Malden (May-Dec daily 10am-5pm; Jan-April call for hours on tel 519/736-5416; $2.75) are now easy to pick out - a sequence of grassy defensive lines surrounding the excavated foundations of several buildings and a single-storey brick barracks of 1819. The interior of the barracks, complete with British army uniforms, is deceptively neat and trim for, as the guides explain, conditions were appallingly squalid. Across from the barracks, the asylum's old laundry and bakery has been turned into an interpretive centre with intriguing accounts of the various episodes of the fort's history, including the War of 1812 and the Rebellion of 1837. Original artefacts are few and far between, but it's here you'll find the powder horn of the Shawnee chief and staunch British ally, Tecumseh, one of the most formidable and renowned of the region's leaders. Born in what is now Ohio in 1769, Tecumseh spent the better part of his life struggling to keep the American settlers from spreading west into Shawnee territory. To this end he allied himself to the British, who were, he felt, less of a territorial threat, and managed by the sheer force of his personality to hold together an aboriginal army of some size. He was killed in the War of 1812 at Moraviantown and his army promptly collapsed.
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