More than 8,000 loyal Orangemen marched in celebration of the 'Glorious Twelfth' along Toronto's streets lined by enthusiastic crowds on July 12, 1932. The veteran marshal, 'Billy' Harper, in charge for the last thirty years, was astride a traditional white horse.John Boyd/The Globe and Mail
Mark Bourrie’s latest book is Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia.
If you were in Toronto a century ago, today would have been the start of a long weekend.
On July 12 – The Glorious Twelfth – the anniversary of Protestant William III of Orange’s slaughter of Irish Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, Toronto shut down. Thousands marched in the Orange parade, which took two hours to pass a spot. Then, 40,000 people flooded into Queen’s Park or the Exhibition grounds to hear speeches from important Orange Lodge leaders that would sound ridiculous to a modern Torontonian.
The tradition persists, though in a much diminished form. On July 20, Orangemen will march in its 202nd Glorious Twelfth parade in Toronto, taking a short hike around the Danforth, Main, Gerrard and Victoria Park streets. Still, it was not so long ago that the Orange Lodge mattered and the parades were more impressive.
When I was a kid in the late 1960s, my father was principal of the Roman Catholic elementary school in Collingwood, Ont. For the Glorious Twelfth, Orangemen hung a banner nearby that read, “One School, One Faith, One Flag.” The mayor, dressed as “King Billy” – William III – rode a white horse at the front of the parade, followed by old men in fraternal garb and women with orange umbrellas.
In its glory days, the Orange Lodge preserved Protestant supremacy in Toronto over Catholics and other “pauper immigrants.” From 1850 to 1954, almost every Toronto mayor and alderman was an Orangeman, as were the chief of police and most cops.
Orange dominance came from Canada’s strange immigration pattern. Between 1825 and 1845, 500,000 Irish people arrived in Canada, many from the province of Ulster. In Ontario, two-thirds of the Irish immigrants were Protestants, a ratio unseen in the rest of the Irish diaspora. They brought Northern Ireland’s troubles with them.
Ontario’s version of the Orange Lodge was founded in the 1830s. In 1891, Protestant Ulstermen, who made up 9 per cent of the population, held 45 per cent of the jobs at city hall, while only about 5 per cent of public employees were Catholics. Four prime ministers – John A. Macdonald, John Abbott, Mackenzie Bowell and John Diefenbaker – were Orangemen, too.
Loyal Protestants included Indigenous people whose nations had a long history of military alliance to Britain. Orange Lodges opened in three Haudenosaunee territories and one Anishinaabe settlement. Most of those lodges excluded white people. Oronhyatekha, a Mohawk accountant from Tyendinaga, designed the Orange Order’s mutual life insurance program, which exists to this day.
Orangemen were loyal to the Crown, but the love was one-way. In 1860, when the 18-year-old Prince of Wales visited Canada, he spent part of the trip dodging Orangemen. When the Lodge built a big arch on Kingston’s main street, Prince Edward refused to leave his ship. As his ship sailed west, the same thing happened in Belleville, Ont., and other towns along the shore, but his staff was able to convince Toronto Orangemen to back off.
In Toronto, the Orange Lodge showed its wealth and power by building spectacular halls. Edward Lennox, an Orangeman, designed the Ontario Legislature building, the old City Hall, Casa Loma and big Orange Order buildings, including Victoria Hall on Queen Street East. In the 1920s, Orange rallies could fill these halls and the space between them, as well as the grounds of St. James Cathedral and what’s now the Metropolitan United Church. The Orangemen tried to solve their space problem in 1924 by making a lowball offer of $600,000 for Casa Loma and its five acres. (It had cost its builder, Sir Henry Pellatt, $3.5-million before he went broke.)
That offer was rejected, and ultimately, the Orangemen dodged a bullet. When the Great Depression started, many Orangemen had to stop paying their dues, and the Depression, the Second World War and Canada’s shift from British to American political orbit were lethal to the movement. In 1949, a journalist described the Glorious Twelfth parade as “moth-eaten,” which got him a scolding from the city’s Board of Control, but he was right. Six years later, Toronto’s last Orange mayor left office.
In 1890, there were 1,194 Orange Lodges in Canada, with 925 of them in Ontario. In 2000, just 323 were left – 134 in Ontario and 116 in Newfoundland. A small cluster exists in the Ottawa Valley, on both sides of the river. Four small lodges survive in Toronto.
Victoria Hall was sold for $700,000 in 1871 and was torn down. Toronto’s last surviving Orange building from the glory days is the former Western District Orange Lodge, at College Street and Euclid Avenue. It’s since been turned into condos.
But there’s still an image of King Billy on that building. Today, he celebrates alone.
Editor’s note: (July 15, 2024): An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that the former Western District Orange Lodge building in Toronto was at the intersection of Dundas Street and Euclid Avenue. This version has been corrected. (July 18, 2024) An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that the Battle of the Boyne took place in 1689. This version has been corrected.