Toronto The Belfast Of 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."

Most historical accounts of the Irish Catholic community in Toronto describe it as a poor underclass of society, ghettoised by the largely British, Protestant population and characterised by the sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics that earned Toronto the title "Belfast of Canada." Challenging this long-standing view of the Irish Catholic experience, Mark McGowan provides a new picture of the community's evolution and integration into Canadian society. McGowan traces the evolution of the Catholic community from an isolated religious and Irish ethnic subculture in the late nineteenth century into an integrated segment of English Canadian society by the early twentieth century. English-speaking Catholics moved into all neighbourhoods of the city and socialised with and married non-Catholics. They even embraced their own brand of imperialism: by 1914 thousands of them had enlisted to fight for God and the British Empire. McGowan's detailed and lively portrait will be of great interest to students and scholars of religious history, Irish studies, ethnic history, and Canadian history. Mark G. McGowan is associate professor of history at St Michael's College, University of Toronto.

At the beginning of 1793 Toronto was the gateway to a distant portage to the Upper Great Lakes, its permanent population a lone fur trader. One hundred and twenty-five years later it was a solid, vibrant metropolis, an industrial powerhouse supporting half a million residents. Toronto is a city built by its people, from the original colonial aristocracy of the Family Compact, to the masses of British and Irish migrants who forged its profound links with Empire, to the polyglot flow of international migration that would ultimately transform the city in the twentieth century. This book recounts their stories, and their stories are the history of Toronto's emergence as a world-class city. In Toronto to 1918, distinguished historian J.M.S. Careless expertly draws Toronto's stories together, creating an illuminating and entertaining portrait of the city. The text is complemented with more than 150 historical illustrations.

From the 1870s to the 1950s, waves of immigrants to Toronto – Irish, Jewish, Chinese and Italian, among others – landed in ‘The Ward’ in the centre of downtown. Deemed a slum, the area was crammed with derelict housing and ‘ethnic’ businesses; it was razed in the 1950s to make way for a grand civic plaza and modern city hall. Archival photos and contributions from a wide variety of voices finally tell the story of this complex neighbourhood and the lessons it offers about immigration and poverty in big cities. Contributors include historians, politicians, architects and descendents of Ward res­idents on subjects such as playgrounds, tuberculosis, bootlegging and Chinese laundries. With essays by Howard Akler, Denise Balkissoon, Steve Bulger, Jim Burant, Arlene Chan, Alina Chatterjee, Cathy Crowe, Richard Dennis, Ruth Frager, Richard Harris, Gaetan Heroux, Edward Keenan, Bruce Kidd, Mark Kingwell, Jack Lipinsky, John Lorinc, Shawn Micallef, Howard Moscoe, Laurie Monsebraaten, Terry Murray, Ratna Omidvar, Stephen Otto, Vincenzo Pietropaolo, Michael Posner, Michael Redhill, Victor Russell, Ellen Scheinberg, Sandra Shaul, Myer Siemiatycki, Mariana Valverde, Thelma Wheatley, Kristyn Wong­-Tam and Paul Yee, among others.

In mid-nineteenth-century Canada, the Irish outnumbered the English and Scots two to one. Yet they have been much less studied than their US counterparts, even though their experience was very different. Irish settlers arrived earlier in Canada, formed a larger proportion of the founding communities, and were largely rural-based; more than half were Protestant. The Famine provided only a rather late part of the Irish emigration to Canada, which took place principally between 1816 and 1855. The authors evaluate both emigration and settlement and present as well revealing personal documents about intense, often painful experiences of the settlers. Part I explores the geographical links – particularly the phenomenon of chain migration – that shaped decisions to leave Ireland. Part II examines patterns of settlement in the new land. Part III, with biographies of immigrants and collections of letters written home, chronicles personal and social life in the new land and the abiding interest in family and friends in Canada and back in Ireland. The documents illustrate links and patterns revealed in the earlier analysis of emigration and settlement; they also offer an additional, intimate perspective on a key phase in the cultural history of Canada and Ireland.

Canadians have been involved in, intrigued by, and frustrated with Irish politics, from the Fenian Raids of the 1860s to the present day. Yet scholars have largely neglected Canadian–Irish relations since the consolidation of the Irish Free State in the 1920s. In Canada and Ireland, Philip J. Currie addresses this lacuna and examines political relations between the two countries, from partition to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. This intriguing study sheds light on Ottawa’s responses to key developments such as Ireland’s neutrality in the Second World War, its unsettled relationship with the Commonwealth, and the always contentious issue of Irish unification.