Global Heritage Press

Book on CD EDITION

The Sash Canada Wore- A Historical Geography of The Orange Order in Canada (2nd printing)
by: Cecil J. Houston and William J. Smith

This work explores the role of the Orange Order in the unfolding settlement geography of Canada. The social and cultural life of Canada is examined as it progressed from British colonial status to an ethnically complex and industrially advanced modern nation.

Although a distinctly Irish creation, the Orange Order, early in its development, was inserted into a British North America that was being opened to British settlers.

Protestant Irish soldiers and emigrants, largely Ulster-born, introduced the organization into New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario within the first decade of the nineteenth century. In its zenith, the movement had a membership of as many as one in three Canadians.

Successive waves of Ulster emigrants extended the Orange ideals and the order's institutional superstructure to the settlement frontier.

Contents include:

• Introduction
• The Irish, British, and Canadian Beginnings
  • Irish origins
  • Transfer to Britain
  • Transfer to British North America
• Orangeism and the Settlement Geography of Central Canada, 1830-1920
  • Establishment of the Grand Lodge
  • Growth in Ontario
  • Geographical spread through Ontario
  • Geographical expansion and adjustment in Ontario
  • Quebec
• West and East
  • Manitoba
  • Saskatchewan and Alberta
  • British Columbia
  • New Brunswick
  • Nova Scotia
  • Prince Edward Island
  • Newfoundland
• Orange Membership: Strength and Composition
  • Numerical strength
  • Characteristics of the membership: rural and small town
  • TorontoOrangemen
• The Social Dimension
  • Conviviality
  • Ritual and colour
  • Discipline
  • Self-help and mutual aid
  • Orange Mutual Benefit Fund
  • The Orange landscape
• The Ideological and Political Dimension
  • Imperialism and Orangeism
  • National party politics
  • Provincial party politics
  • Other ultra-protestant movements
  • Local politics; Toronto
• The Collapse
  • Attrition
  • Geographical retraction
  • Causes of decline
  • The Orange Order in the 1970s
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• List of tables
• List of figures
• List of drawings and photographs
• Index
  
  

To understand cultural and political development of Canada throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, researchers must gain an understanding of the effect of the Orange Order. This book is your best first step in gaining that understanding.