[URBAN NOTE] "Guy Fawkes Night, 1864"

[rfmcdonald]

As described by Daniel Panneton at Torontoist, Guy Fawkes Night was in the mid-19th century an ethnically fraught holiday. Maybe that's why it isn't so big in a Canada where Roman Catholics now form a plurality of the population.

Irish Catholic migrants who came to Toronto in the late 1840s to escape the Famine found themselves in a British and staunchly Protestant world. The municipal government was firmly in the hands of the Orange Order of Canada, an ultra-Protestant and fiercely anti-Catholic fraternity. Facing both official prejudice and a restrictive job market, Irish Catholics turned inwards, founding densely populated and impoverished neighbourhoods such as Corktown and Cabbagetown.

In his paper, the Irish Canadian, Patrick Boyle complained that Toronto “was in the hands of an Orange mob, aided in their work of blood and ruin by an Orange Mayor.” Boyle backed his claim by detailing transgressions committed by Orangemen in the past decade: an 1856 attempt to blow up the House of Providence, an 1858 St. Patrick’s Day riot that ended in the murder of an Irish Catholic, and an 1858 incident in which an Orange mob attacked the National Festival of Ireland.

The Hibernian Benevolent Society had been founded in 1859 to celebrate and protect Irish Catholics. Members of the Fenian Brotherhood, or Irish Republican Brotherhood, quickly infiltrated the Society and politicized its ranks. The Irish Canadian insisted that Irish Catholics “are a law-abiding, peaceable people, desirous that all classes of community shall enjoy the fullest political freedom” and warned the Orangemen that “the men whom you threaten are not school-boys, to be frightened by big words.” The Irish Catholics were not prepared to “lie tamely down and suffer the hell-child of Orange Ascendancy.”

In the days leading up to the Guy Fawkes celebrations of 1864, rumours began to circulate that the Orangemen were planning to burn effigies of Pope Pius IX, Irish politician Daniel O’Connell, and the recently deceased Duke of Newcastle.

Many observers feared street violence would break out. Invoking a riot that had killed 11 that spring in Belfast, the Irish Canadian claimed that on November 5, 1864, “the [Orange] lodges met and determined to follow the example of their brethren” in Ireland. The Hibernians publicly declared they would prevent any such demonstration, by force if necessary. It was only the intervention of Mayor Francis Henry Medcalf and several other Orange leaders that prevented the Order’s rank and file from carrying out their bonfire. Celebrations were held, but, save for a small flute band’s evening parade, took place entirely indoors.

The Orangemen’s restraint did little to cool the tempers of the Hibernians, who, in spite of the Catholic Church’s opposition, were determined to demonstrate that evening. Reports vary, but between 300 and 600 Irish Catholics gathered at Queen’s Park, “armed to the teeth with guns and pikes.”