CAN-ORANGE-L Archives

From: "Brian McConnell" <>
Subject: A Word of Support of the Orangemen
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 22:41:22 -0400

Fellow List Members:

The following article appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix Newspaper
on July 14, 1998. That was during the time that the parading issue in
Northern Ireland was creating controversy and criticism about
Orangeism everywhere including in Canada. I have just recently
received a copy of this article and post it here for general interest.
The Toronto Sun Newspaper article which the writer Claire Hoy refers
to having written a number of years ago was previously posted to the
Canada Orange Mailing List and can be found by doing a search of the
List Archives.

A WORD OF SUPPORT OF THE ORANGEMEN

By Claire Hoy

Not the maniacs who firebombed a home in Northern Ireland nor the
weekend where three children were burned alive. Their actions are
reprehensible and like all murders, should spend the rest of their
putrid lives in jail.

But those fanatics no more represent mainline Protestants in Ireland
or around the world than the Roman Catholic thugs in the Irish
Republican Army represent Catholics everywhere.

That having been said, Orangemen in Ireland and elsewhere have as much
right to march and to celebrate their history as anyone does.

Canada - happily in this context - is not Ireland, yet the July 12
Orange Parade in this country is the one ethnic event which attracts
extraordinary derision form the media, political leaders and yes,
other ethnic groups as well.

Why is this? Orangemen in Canada have never been violent.

They are Protestants, yes. But the Knights of Columbus are the
equivalent Roman Catholic group. Indeed, every religious group and
every ethnic group has equivalents and nobody is constantly raining on
their parades.

Indeed, in a country which prides itself on tolerance for
multiculturalism, the one culture which apparently can't be tolerated
is the old-time Protestant Orange Culture.
People say that's because its about hating other guys, especially
Roman Catholics.

To be sure it started that way. But not without reason.

My own Scottish ancestors were hounded out of Scotland by Mary Queen
of Scots, a Roman Catholic, who, with her husband James II, launched a
merciless campaign to rid the land of Protestants. My ancestors, all
members of the John Knox Society, had to leave their homes and escape
to Ireland to save their lives.

And so, when William III defeated James II in the Battle of the Boyne
and the Battle of Aughrim in 1860 - not long after Louis XIV of France
had made it illegal on the pain of death to be a Protestant in the
country - the Protestants celebrated.

Many have celebrated this victory for their ancestors - and for the
right to have their own religion - ever since. Yet when people speak
of the Orange parade in Canada, they ineviteably paint the Orangemen
as the persecutors of Roman Catholics. Fact is that Orangemen came as
a direct result of Catholic persecution of Protestants and as a way
for them to maintain political influence in Ireland in the face of
growing Catholics influence.

Yes, yes you say. Those are old wars and should be forgotten.

But they're not forgotten by any other group. What happened to Native
Canadians is also old news, but would anybody suggest they forget
their heritage? Not likely.

Would anybody say that Quebecers should forget the fact that they were
defeated on the Plains of Abraham and - in their minds at least -
dealt a bad hand which led to English ascendancy in Quebec until the
Quiet Revolution turned things around? I think not.

When I was a young boy in Prescott, Ontario, the annual Orange parade
on July 12 was the biggest event of the year. That not longer is
true. Fair enough.

I myself, despite my pure Orange history, have never marched in an
Orange parade and never intend to march in one. But there are people
who feel a kinship for their history and their culture - just as there
are those who feel the same way about whatever culture they come
from - and want to put on their orange banners and march down the
street once a year.

Yet these people, unlike any other group, are regularly maligned as
bigots.

Many years ago, when David Crombie was Toronto's tiny perfect mayor, I
once wrote a colum for the Toronto Sun chastising him for deliberately
skipping the Orange parade. My point then - as it is now - was that
the mayor marched in every other similar parade, so why boycott this
one?

Some time after that, when the Urban Alliance people complained that
the Toronto Sun Newspaper was a hotbed of racism, one of the examples
they used to demonstrate this was my column defending the right of
Orangemen to hold their parade.

Obviously things haven't changed. So, I ask: who are the bigots -
those who would deny one group the same right every other group has;
or those who say if you want to march, march?

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• A Word of Support of the Orangemen by "Brian McConnell" <>