The Orange Order In Canada

In late nineteenth-century Toronto, municipal politics were so dominated by the Irish Protestants of the Orange Order that the city was known as the “Belfast of Canada.” For almost a century, virtually every mayor of Toronto was an Orangeman and the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne was a civic holiday. Toronto, the Belfast of Canada explores the intolerant origins of today’s cosmopolitan city. Using lodge membership lists, census data, and municipal records, William J. Smyth details the Orange Order’s role in creating Toronto’s municipal culture of militant Protestantism, loyalism, and monarchism. One of Canada’s foremost experts on the Orange Order, Smyth analyses the Orange Order’s influence between 1850 and 1950, the city’s frequent public displays of sectarian tensions, and its occasional bouts of rioting and mayhem.

This book locates Canadian Orangeism in its international context, assesses the activities of the Order in Toronto, the 'Belfast of North America', analyzes the ambivalent relationship of Canadian Orangeism to the crown, discusses Orange influences on Canadian Confederation, and examines the reasons for the Order's decline in the second half of the 20th century. Contents: Don M. MacRaild (UU), "The associationalism of the Orange diaspora;" Eric Kaufmann (U London), "Orange Order in Ontario, Newfoundland, Scotland and N. Ireland;" Brian Clarke (U Toronto), "Parades and public life in Victorian Toronto;" William Jenkins (York U), "Loyal Orange lodges in early 20th-cent. Toronto;" Ian Radforth (U Toronto), "Orangemen and the crown;" David A. Wilson (U Toronto), "Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Orangeism and the new nationality;" John Edward FitzGerald (Memorial U Newfoundland), "The Orange Order and Newfoundland's confederation with Canada, 1948- 9;" Cecil J. Houston (U Windsor) & William J. Smyth (NUIM), "Decline of the Orange Order in Canada, 1905- 2005;" Mark G. McGowan (U Toronto), "Postscript."

Here is the story of the rise, spread, and fall of the Orange Order in Canada. Beginning in 1800, the Order grew steadily in many parts of the country during the nineteenth century, reaching its peak in the early part of the twentieth century. Since then, with the changes in Canadian society, the Order has declined in popularity and since 1945 has almost disappeared. The Saha Canada Wore explains how this immigrant, ethnic ideology, widely known for its Protestant Irishness, opposition to Roman Catholics, and loyalty to the British royal family, managed to become so dominant, especially in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. The role of the Orange Lodge as a local centre for good times, social interaction, and mutual aid in the various frontier, farm, and urban communities of colonial Canada sustained its development. This role also allowed the Order to move beyond the boundaries of its Irish identity to include the English fishermen of Newfoundland, the Scottish miners of Nova Scotia, the German farmers of the Pontiac region of Quebec, the Scots and Mohawks of Ontario, and settlers of the Canadian prairies. The study is based on historical documents of the national Order, the manuscript records of more than fifty lodges, and the results of extensive field studies in Orange communities in every province. This significant contribution to Canadian social history will appeal not only to historians and geographers, but to members 'King Billy' on his white horse at the head of the parade.

The first systematic social history of the Orange Order. Based on unprecedented access to the Order's archives, the book charts the Order's path from the peak of its influence, in the early 1960s, to its present crisis, and argues that the traditional Unionism of the past is giving way to a more militant form which is winning the hearts of the younger generation.

Provides a transnational account of women's involvement in conservative political activism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Britain and Canada

"During the mid to late 1840s, dramatic riots shook the communities of Woodstock, Fredericton, and Saint John. Irish-Catholic immigrants fought Protestant Orangemen ... This book is the first serious historical treatment of the bloody riots and the tangled events that led to them."--p. [i].