The Loyal Orange Association in Canada, or simply the Orange Association Canada (OAC), is the Canadian branch of the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organization that began in County Armagh in Ireland in 1795. Founded in 1812, the Orange Order in Canada has played a large part in the history of the country, with many prominent members including four prime ministers, among them Sir John A. Macdonald and John Diefenbaker. They promote and commemorate Ulster Scots and Orange heritage. This is observed through Orange parades, the biggest being the Twelfth of July, which commemorates King William III's victory in the Battle of the Boyne.
Representatives from the Grand Orange Lodge of Canada travel to partake in the triennial Imperial Orange Council meetings.
Sentinel News is the official publication of the Loyal Orange Association on Canada.
Upper Canada and the Province of Canada
The Orange Lodges have existed in Canada at least since the War of 1812. The first Lodge was established in Montreal by William Burton, Arthur Hopper, John Dyer, Francis Abbott and several others. William Burton travelled to Ireland to obtain the warrant to open the Lodge from the Grand Lodge of Ireland and became the first Grand Master of the Montreal Lodge. In the following years Arthur Hopper was elected the next Grand Master and given the power of granting warrants to subordinate Lodges under the Great Seal of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. The first such Lodge was granted to Robert Birch of Richmond.
The Order was more formally organized in 1830 when Ogle Robert Gowan established the Grand Orange Lodge of British North America in the Upper Canada town of Elizabethtown, which became Brockville in 1832 (according to the plaque outside the original lodge in Brockville, Ontario). Gowan immigrated from Ireland in 1829, and became the Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of British North America. His father was the grand master of the Irish Orange Order. Most early members were from Ireland, but later many Scots, English and other Protestant Europeans joined the Order, in addition to Amerindians, such as those in the Mohawk Orange Lodge which survives into the present day.
Fraternal organization The Order was the chief social institution in Upper Canada, organizing many community and benevolent activities, and helping Protestant immigrants to settle. It remained a predominant political force in southern Ontario well into the twentieth century. There were scores of socially prominent citizens who were granted honorary membership but did not actually participate in official lodge business. Surprisingly given its great prestige, although there were many members drawn from the upper and middle classes, lodge membership was predominantly drawn from the ranks of labourers, street railway workers, teamsters, and other elements of the working class.
Besides sentimental patriotic or imperialist motivations, many Orangemen joined because the benefits of mutual aid, security, and health supports made it easier to survive the difficulties of working-class life. Middle-class members, such as professionals, small-shop owners, and tavern-keepers, saw membership in terms of commercial gain through the steady attraction of lodge members as clientele. The Order's degrees and solemn oaths bonded men together as part of a greater whole, and dressing in the order's distinctive sash and regalia for the Twelfth of July parade let members show off their status and achievements to the greater community. The Grand Orange Lodge of British America Benefit Fund was established in 1881 to provide fraternal benefits to members and remains as a modern insurance system.
Protestant ascendency and politics in Toronto The Grand Orange Lodge of British America was established in Toronto in 1830, and it expanded steadily so that there were over 20 lodges in 1860, 31 in 1880, and 56 by 1895. At the turn of the century, Toronto was nicknamed "The Belfast of Canada". Historian Hereward Senior has noted that the Orange Order's political ideal was expressed in the word "ascendancy." Senior said:This meant, in effect, control of the volunteer militia, of much of the machinery of local government, and substantial influence with the Dublin administration. Above all, it meant the ability to exert pressure on magistrates and juries, which gave Orangemen a degree of immunity from the law. Their means of securing ascendancy had been the Orange lodges which provided links between Irish Protestants of all classes. This ascendancy often meant political power for Protestant gentlemen and a special status for Protestant peasants. In the context of Toronto, such ascendancy was sought through the Corporation (as the administration of the city of Toronto was known). By 1844, six of Toronto's ten aldermen were Orangemen, and over the rest of the nineteenth century twenty of twenty-three mayors would be as well.
Control of 'the Corporation' The Orange Order became a central facet of life in many parts of Canada, especially in the business centre of Toronto where many deals and relationships were forged at the lodge. Toronto politics, especially on the municipal level, were almost wholly dominated by the Orange Order. An influential weekly newspaper, The Sentinel, promoted Protestant social and political views and was widely circulated throughout North America.Thomson, Andrew (1983). The Sentinel and Orange and Protestant Advocate, 1877-1896: An Orange view of Canada (M.A. thesis) Wilfrid Laurier University
The Protestant Protective Association was founded in the 1890s, arising out of the "Equal Rights agitation," and was supported principally by members of the Orange Order.PPA in Ontario History and Principles (1894) https://archive.org/details/cihm_25285/page/n5/mode/2up Several of its members ran for political office and were elected in 1894.
At its height in 1942, 16 of the 23 members of city council were members of the Orange Order.Leslie Howard Saunders. An Orangeman in public life: the memoirs of Leslie Howard Saunders. Britannia Printers, 1980. pg. 85 Every mayor of Toronto in the first half of the twentieth century was an Orangeman. This continued until the 1954 election when the Jewish Nathan Phillips defeated staunch Orange leader Leslie Howard Saunders.
Electoral riots "Ascendancy," or control of the legal and political machinery, gave the Orange Order a perceived monopoly on the use of "legitimate" violence. Between 1839 and 1866, the Orange Order was involved in 29 riots in Toronto, of which 16 had direct political inspiration. The violent disturbances were targeted at candidates who wanted political equality for French-Canadians such as Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, the Children of Peace of Sharon, of which members of the Orange Order killed an adherent, and English reformers who were opposed to the Family Compact, such as Robert Baldwin.Garner, Franchise and Politics in BNA, p. 99-100 Many electoral riots took place during the election of the 1st Parliament of the Province of Canada and Baldwin's ministerial by-election after appointment to the executive council.Garner, Franchise and Politics in BNA, p. 100-101
Ottawa The Orangemen, members of the various Ottawa, Westboro and Billings Bridge Lodges as well as lodges from outlying towns paraded from the Orange Hall, Gloucester Street to St. Matthew's Anglican Church (Ottawa) on 10 July 1938.
In the rest of British America The Orange Lodge was a centre for community activity in Newfoundland. For example, in 1903 Sir William Coaker founded the Fisherman's Protective Union (FPU) in an Orange Hall in Herring Neck. Furthermore, during the term of Commission of Government (1934–1949), the Orange Lodge was one of only a handful of "democratic" organizations that existed in the Dominion of Newfoundland. It supported Newfoundland's confederation with Canada in reaction to Catholic bishops' support for self-government.
The Orange Order was also a force in New Brunswick, such that riots surrounding Orange marches occurred in the 1840s (a period of Irish mass immigration) in New Brunswick. Even tiny Woodstock, New Brunswick, experienced a riot in 1847 on The Twelfth (12 July, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne), near a now-vanished Orange Hall at the corner of Victoria and Boyne streets. The height of conflict was a riot in Saint John, New Brunswick, on 12 July 1849, in which at least 12 people died. The violence subsided as Irish immigration declined,Scott W. See, "The Orange Order and Social Violence in Mid-Nineteenth Century Saint John," Acadiensis 1983 13(1): 68-92 though even in 1883, 5 were killed in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in the "usual" "collision" "between Orangemen and Roman Catholics", in an event that became known as The Harbour Grace Affray.
After 1945, the Canadian Orange Order rapidly declined in membership and political influence. The development of the welfare state made its fraternal society functions less important. A more important cause of the decline was the secularization of Canadian society: with fewer Canadians attending churches of any sort, the old division between Protestant and Catholic seemed less relevant. Perhaps even more important was the decline of the British Empire and consequently the reduced value of maintaining the 'British Connection' which had always underpinned the Order. The Twelfth remains a provincial holiday in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador under the name Orangeman's Day."The Spirit of the Twelfth (1982); The story of the Orange Order in Canada", Gravenhurst Printing, 1982 by Gary Denniss
Province of Alberta Historian William Baergen notes that White Anglo Saxon Protestantism (WASP) was a foundational feature of the early settlement in Alberta. He notes that as immigrants from non-Anglo-Saxon regions of Europe entered the province in greater numbers between 1921 and 1931 that there was a corresponding rise in "Anglo-Saxon racism, anti-Catholicism and immigrant phobia".William Peter Baergen, The Ku Klux Klan in Central Alberta, Central Alberta Historical Society, 2000, p. 8 Baergen says that "the more radical white Anglo-Saxon Protestants were represented by the Orange Order, and formed the essence of the anti-Catholic and anti-foreigner agenda that emerged in Alberta during the period from 1929–1933. Baergen notes that "Wherever the dominance of the British way appeared threatened, an Orange Lodge could be expected to appear."William Peter Baergen, The Ku Klux Klan in Central Alberta, Central Alberta Historical Society, 2000, p.14
In a letter to Alberta Premier John Edward Brownlee on December 13, 1927, the Hesketh Loyal Orange Lodge, No. 3013 congratulated the premier on his stand restricting immigration to the province, saying "By unanimous vote of the members of this lodge... I have been instructed to write and congratulate you on your stand re THE EMIGRATION POLICY and its ADMINISTRATION [sic]"William Peter Baergen, The Ku Klux Klan in Central Alberta, Central Alberta Historical Society, 2000, p. 58
Orangemen and war
Orangemen played a big part in suppressing the Upper Canada Rebellion of William Lyon Mackenzie in 1837. Though the rebellion was short-lived, 317 Orangemen were sworn into the local militia by the Mayor of Toronto and then resisted Mackenzie's march down Yonge Street in 1837.
They were involved in resisting the Fenians at the Battle of Ridgeway in 1866. An obelisk there marks the spot where Orangemen died in defending the colony against an attack by members of Clan na Gael (commonly known as Fenians).
Orangemen in western Canada helped suppress the rebellions of Louis Riel in 1870 and 1885. The killing of abducted Orangeman Thomas Scott was a turning point in the 1870 Red River Rebellion which caused the Dominion government to launch the Wolseley expedition to restore order. The first Orange warrant in Manitoba and the North-West Territories was carried by a member of this expedition.