CAN-ORANGE-L Archives

From: "B McConnell" <>
Subject: [CANADA-ORANGE] St. Patrick's Hall, Toronto & Orange activism
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 13:10:39 -0300

ST PATRICK'S HALL

By Bruce Bell

On March 10th 1967 an enormous explosion rocked the intersection of King and
Jarvis in downtown Toronto. A neighbour of mine, Elsie Sawchuck, standing on
the NE corner looked up and saw the entire east wing of The St. Lawrence
Hall comes crashing down onto the street below. The Hall weakened after
years of patchwork renovations was being restored as part of Toronto's
Centennial Project to celebrate Canada's one hundredth birthday. Elsie, who
was working as a buyer for the National Ballet's prop department then housed
in the old North Market which was then attached to the Hall tells me there
was a fantastic noise followed by a huge cloud of dust.She was lucky to have
escaped. Had she been a few seconds earlier crossing the street who knows
what would have happened but as it was thankfully no one was killed. Not
only did the east wing collapse that day but with it went the last of
remnants of Toronto's dirty little war between the Protestants and the Irish
Catholics symbolized by what was then St. Patrick's Hall.

Today a bland board room named the East Room occupies the site but from 1850
to the turn of the 20th century St. Patrick's Hall which took up the eastern
portion of the top floor was the home to the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union
the ICBU. The top floor, also home to the magnificent Great Hall, has an
outer lobby that stretches east to west where one can walk easily from one
room to the next but when the east wing came crashing down you could see a
cement wall smack dab in the middle separating St. Patrick's Hall from the
Great Hall. That wall now gone represented more than just an architectural
feature. To enter St. Patrick's Hall one had to use the back staircase still
in existence for heaven forbid the Irish should use the front door and
mingle with the English aristocracy of the day who used the Great Hall for
various no-Irish-allowed functions.

Although many of York's founding families including Lord Dorchester the man
who choose Toronto as a military site in the 1780's, were of Irish decent it
was the great waves of Irish Catholic immigrants fleeing the Great Potato
Famine back home that the rest of society had misgivings for.

It wasn't so much that they were Irish it was the fact that they were
Catholic that bothered York's and later Toronto's ruling elite.

So hated were the newly arrived Irish Catholics who by 1880 made up 95 per
cent of Toronto's Catholic population, that George Brown writing in his
newspaper The Globe states..
'Irish beggars are to be met everywhere, and they are ignorant and vicious
as they are poor. They are lazy, improvident and unthankful; they fill our
poorhouses and our prisons, and are brutish in superstition as Hindoos.'

Far be it from me to cast a bad light on one of our Father's of
Confederation and the man after which one of our most important schools of
higher learning is named for but he who was shot and killed by a disgruntled
employee in 1880 in his office at King and Victoria sounds like a ranting
racist to me.
He was not alone.

George Brown, a Scots born Presbyterian, was against state supported
Catholic schools and through his newspaper, waged war with Toronto's Irish
press adding fuel to the already explosive Protestant-Catholic conflict.

The centuries of hate brought on when England's Protestant King William of
Orange defeated the forces of Ireland's Catholic King James in 1690 at the
Battle of the Boyne crossed the sea and planted itself firmly in our city.

The newly arrived Irish were not only poverty stricken when they arrived but
also disease ridden with Cholera and Typhoid or ship's fever. Those that
survived settled along the waterfront near the Don Basin and from that spot
clusters of Irish communities were born in areas called Slab Town, Paddy
Town and Cork Town and it was from those early settlements that Cabbagetown
evolved.
Life in those early Irish ghettos of the mid 19th century was appalling.

For the majority of us who live in relative 21st century comfort some of the
same streets we now call home were once seething hellholes right out of a
horror movie.

I came across this gruesome account historian Murray Nicolson wrote in 1984
of those early slums,
'The tendency to maintain tight-knit kinship associations was responsible
for close interbreeding which resulted in infantile anomalies, like
cluicaunes, or ugly dwarfs-clinically identified as Leprechaunism. Many of
those children were disposed of quickly and buried in the cabbage patches of
Cabbagetown.'
The children of the famine Irish who survived infancy grew up only to be
treated as slaves in the mills and factories that once made up the southern
end of town working 12 hour days by the age of 10.

To be Irish and Catholic at the height of Victorian Toronto meant menial
work with no promise of advancement.

Worse was the fact that it was under the authority of City Law that signs
stating no Irish need apply could be put up in windows of shops along King
Street.
It was law because the men who wrote it were Orange.

Today the expression Orange is almost lost but in its day it meant Power and
July 12, also known as the Glorious 12th the anniversary of the Battle of
the Boyne, was and still is in Ireland today Marching Season.

In early York and later in Toronto right up to the 1950's, to have any real
authority you had to be at least two things, Male and Orange.

Records show that Orange walks are said to have taken place in York as early
as 1820 but it wasn't until 1822 when Bishop Strachan of St. James delivered
a frightful yet foreshadowing sermon to local Orange men stating that 'it
was their God given right to bring arms against the ungodly Irish' and 'to
be fearful of a papist ascendancy' that they started to be a force to be
reckoned with.

>From that day forth it was one long Orange walk well into the 20th century
and with it came riots, murders and unbelievable racism.

The first Orange lodge in Toronto, Nassau no. 4, was established in 1831 and
by 1833 York County had 1,000 Orangemen.

On July 12th of 1835 records state that 'the police court was busy during
the whole of next week with cases of assault and riot.'

In 1839 the Orange Day parade was unusually large after Lieutenant Governor
Sir George Arthur stated in what was then called 'a comforting Irish letter'
that the parade should be banned out of fear of more rioting.
What we see on television coming out of Belfast today was what went on here
a century ago as year after year the parades got larger and more violent.

In 1858 as that year's parade was winding its way along Queen Street shots
were fired and James Brown, a gardener to the mayor, was shot in the back
and another man named King was shot in the face.
The police were called in with heavy artillery loaded and ready for action
as the riot was reaching intolerable proportions.

Eventually the hostilities died down and after a small outbreak on Victoria
at King Street in which guns again were used the street war ended with the
Loyal Orange Lodge no. 301 having their dinner at Thomas Wilson's Inn on
George Street.

The poor Catholic Irish that escaped a devastating famine back home came to
our city with some hope of finding a new and better life.
What they got was this 19th sermon which was typical of what they were
subject to.
'Oh Lord we approach the this morning in an attitude of prayer and likewise
of complaint.

When we came to Canada we expected to find a land flowing with milk and
honey, but instead we find a land peopled by the ungodly Irish. O lord, in
they mercy drive then to the uttermost parts of Canada, make the hewers of
wood and drawers of water, give them no place as magistrates, policemen, or
rulers among thy people. If ye have any favors to bestow, or any good land
to give away, give it to thine own peculiar people, the Scots. Make them
members of Parliament and rulers among thy people, but as for the ungodly
Irish, take them by the heels and shake them over the pit of hell. But O
Lord, don't let them fall in, and the glory be thine forever and ever. Amen'

And so it went on. Year after year. Marching and rioting.

One of the largest riots ever in our city was on March 18, 1878 outside St.
Patrick's Hall when 30,000 Catholics and Protestants showed up and fought
openly.

Rossa O'Donovan a Fenian (Irish Nationalist) lecturer was supposed to speak
that evening but 30,000 Protestant supporters some with torches in hand
showed up, smashed the windows of both St. Patrick's and St. Lawrence Hall
and were determined to burn the entire building down if O'Donovan spoke.
The account of the day stated that 'O'Donovan dressed as a woman and fled
down the back staircase into the Market and out onto Front Street'.

Even today 30,000 people battling on our streets would be terrifying.
It's all forgotten now. For better or for worse.
It's almost as if it never happened.

St. Patrick's day banned for decades is now celebrated openly as a huge
booze fest with few if any of its former political overtones.

The once all-powerful local Orange Lodge now operates as a benevolent
society with none of their former authority and supremacy over City Hall.
Those marches which once brought fear and joy to our streets still happen
every July 12th but they go by barely noticed today. Unimaginable a
generation ago.

A headline caption in The Globe observing the July 12th Orange March in 1923
blares out,
'The Great Parade Passing City Hall-50 Bands-10,000 People Marched along
Queen Street!'

The Irish Catholics of Toronto survived famine and Cholera, with many dying
at sea or in the fever sheds haphazardly erected along our waterfront. Once
ashore they went on to endured decades of unimaginable injustice. Their
harsh existence easing a bit by their distinct way of looking at life, their
'Dearcadh', moving forward, thinking that this too will pass, working hard,
getting an education and taking the time to laugh.

While racism and ignorance is still alive in this city it's no longer the
law of the land as it once was in George Brown's day.

St. Patrick's Hall which was a refuge both politically and socially for the
Irish has also been forgotten.

It's as if it never existed, there's nothing to tell us that it once was
there.
All that remains is the rather bland boardroom with none of its former
opulence.

While the Great Hall had the grandeur and size St. Patrick's although
smaller did have beautiful hand carved walnut and mahogany paneling and a
plaster ceiling that was of note.

The original Hall crumpled to the street below some 25 years ago but its
essence should still be celebrated.
In fact the whole top floor of St. Lawrence Hall with the exception of the
ballroom is rather bland.
It's also disrespectful to our past.

Hanging on the walls of the outer lobbies are photographs of paintings (not
even the real thing which are stored away for fear of being stolen) of some
of our former leading citizens like William Lyon Mackenzie but with no
nameplate to tell us who they are they hang unknown to all but a few.

Recently the Hall was used as a stand in for the White House for the next
Brady bunch movie.
While that in itself doesn't disturb me, it was built to be a peoples hall
after all, what does get me angry is that there's nothing to tell Marsha
Brady et all just how important the top floor is to our cultural Heritage.
It's every bit as historical and important as the real White House is.
What the top floor needs is a few plaques for all to read,
Here within these walls all the Fathers of Canadian Confederations spoke of
the need to form a Nation.

John A Macdonald our first Prime Minister enlightened all who listened that
we should do what we can to help the anti-slavery movement in the US

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• [CANADA-ORANGE] St. Patrick's Hall, Toronto & Orange activism by "B McConnell" <>