On Harkin's recommendation, the government created the Advisory Board for Historic Site Preservation (later called the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada) in 1919 in order to advise the Minister on a new program of National Historic Sites. Brigadier General Ernest Alexander Cruikshank, a noted authority on the War of 1812 and the history of Ontario, was chosen as the Board's first chairman, a post he held for twenty years. The first place designated and plaqued under the new program was the "Cliff Site" in Port Dover, Ontario, where two priests claimed sovereignty over the Lake Erie region for Louis XIV of France in 1670.