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.

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 The study is based on historical documents of the national Order, the manuscript records of more than fifty lodges, and the results of extensive field studies in Orange communities in every province.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.

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."

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

Based on unprecedented access to the Order's internal documents, this book provides the first systematic social history of the Orange Order - the Protestant association dedicated to maintaining the British connection in Northern Ireland. Kaufmann charts the Order's path from the peak of its influence, in the early 1960s, to its present-day crisis. Along the way, he sketches a portrait of many of Orangeism's leading figures, from ex-Prime Minister John Andrews to Ulster Unionist Party politicians like Martin Smyth, James Molyneaux, and David McNarry, and also includes the highly revealing correspondence with adversaries such as Ian Paisley and David Trimble. Packed with analyses of mass-membership trends and attitudes, the book also takes care to tell the story of the Order from 'below' as well as from above. In the process, it argues that the traditional Unionism of West Ulster is giving way to the more militant Unionism of Antrim and Belfast which is winning the hearts of the younger generation in cities and towns throughout the province.

Ogle Gowan - the Irish upstart who turned Ontario Orange - was a self-seeking, treacherous scoundrel who brought his tattered reputation to the raw frontier of Upper Canada, and built the powerful Protestant machine that shaped Canadian history for more than one hundred years. Ogle Gowan was a bastard, a bigot and a brawler, yet his silver-tongued oratory and ruthless political skills made him more than a match for his enemies. Whether crossing swords with the fiery William Lyon Mackenzie or pub-crawling with the young John A. Macdonald he remained, always, slightly larger than life. Don Akenson draws on his talents as both an historian and a novelist to bring the brutal politics of nineteenth-century Ireland and Canada to unforgettable life. In The Orangeman he gives us an extraordinary portrait of a political parvenu whose behaviour was a scandal in his own time, and who left an indelible mark on Canadian history.

"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].