[URBAN NOTE] The Orange Order in Toronto
Jul. 7th, 2008 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldA couple of days ago, as if thinking of my most recent post on ethnic conflict in Canada, Torontoist's Kevin Plummer had an interesting post up there part of their Historicist series, "Orangemen and The Glorious Twelfth of July".
Wikipedia observes, accurately, that the Orange Order had become a major influence in Ontario's public life, managing to convince Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald to hang Louis Riel in 1885 on charges of treason else risk losing the Orange Order vote.
Eventually, Plummer goes on to conclude, the shift of city politics away from issues of personality to questions of day-to-day bureaucratic management, Irish Catholics no longer particularly stand out, and neighbourhoods like Corktown and Cabbagetown are fast gentrifying. Still, there's a commenter at Torontoist who defends the glorious fredeoms of the Glorious revolution against the people who respect an authoritarian pope. I guess that some thinks do manage to hang around.
Nowadays, the Orange Order is thought of as a quaint anachronism, a benevolent society that marches every twelfth of July to commemorate the victory of William III at the Battle of the Boyne. But the Protestant fraternal organization once had a stranglehold on power in Toronto, and its subjugation of Irish Catholics gave the parade on every "Glorious Twelfth" an ominous undercurrent of potential violence. While Toronto's municipal affairs were never as corrupt as elsewhere, the Orange Order operated as a de facto political machine throughout the nineteenth century. Between 1845 and 1900, all but three of Toronto's twenty-three mayors and countless city councillors were members of an Orange Lodge. Protestant principles and moral order, as espoused by the Order, were synonymous with good governance and permeated the city's culture. Moreover, the city council's control over patronage ensured that fellow lodge members filled the civic administration, municipal utilities, and even, for a time, the police and fire departments.
[. . .]
The deep Protestant flavour to city life made "The Belfast of Canada," as Toronto was nicknamed, anything but hospitable to the great influx of Irish Catholic immigrants who arrived in the wake of the Great Famine. Despite their population growing from about 2,000 in the 1840s to 12,135 (or over 27% of the total population) in the 1860s, Irish Catholics could find only unskilled factory work that offered little opportunity to escape the appalling conditions of the slum neighbourhoods of Corktown and Cabbagetown. As local historian Bruce Bell described it: "To be Irish and Catholic at the height of Victorian Toronto meant menial work with no promise of advancement."
Wikipedia observes, accurately, that the Orange Order had become a major influence in Ontario's public life, managing to convince Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald to hang Louis Riel in 1885 on charges of treason else risk losing the Orange Order vote.
Eventually, Plummer goes on to conclude, the shift of city politics away from issues of personality to questions of day-to-day bureaucratic management, Irish Catholics no longer particularly stand out, and neighbourhoods like Corktown and Cabbagetown are fast gentrifying. Still, there's a commenter at Torontoist who defends the glorious fredeoms of the Glorious revolution against the people who respect an authoritarian pope. I guess that some thinks do manage to hang around.
