we were taught in school that Canada actually won that war

I think that, from the Canadian perspective you *did win the war. Y'all were innocently sitting there and US'ns wanted to "liberate" you from the yoke of the evil Brits. You successfully staved us off. You won.

in the US, children aren't even taught about that war

Not quite. We were taught that it was about the impressment of sailors and that we stopped that so we won. From a broader perspective, we came out, as of troy stated, with something like a draw, but, looking at the war from a more global perspective as AnnaS points out in her Beethoven/Tchaikovsky post, we were on the losing side. We don't go into that when we are filling *our little kiddies with *our version of the lies of history.