Merry Hearts Make Light Days

In June 1812, 17-year-old John Le Couteur, an officer in a Canadian regiment of the British army, arrived in Halifax to learn that war had broken out between the United States and Great Britain. For the next three years Le Couteur campaigned from Halifax to Fort Erie and left an entertaining memoir of his experiences full of tales of storm-tossed voyages, arduous winter marches, battles on land and water, the perils of committing matrimony, high and low society -- and the occasional ghost story -- played out against the spendid scenery of North America. A man of the Regency period (a time of public manners and private passions), Le Couteur recounts his true-life adventures with drama and action, laughter and love in an engaging and easy style that reads more like a novel than a historical memoir (turn overleaf for some examples). A perennial favourite that has appealed to general readers as well as military buffs, Merry Hearts Make Light Days has been delighting audiences for six years and Johnny himself appeared as a major character in the recently televised documentary of "The War of 1812".