Blacklock’s pauses for the 157th anniversary of Confederation to wish all friends and subscribers a happy Canada Day. We’re back tomorrow — The Editor
Went downtown this Canada Day
to join the celebration.
A girl wrapped in red-and-white sold three flags
for two dollars, five for three.
She wanted my money.
A street performer had his open guitar case
in front of him.
He wanted my money.
A juggler approached the crowd,
holding his hat.
He, too, wanted my money.
By the pub, a sign invited me to all-I-can-eat-wings
for six dollars.
They only wanted my money.
At the lemonade stand,
four dollars could get me a small cup, mostly ice.
They really wanted my money.
Tired of the assault on my wallet,
I waived a taxi to go back home.
The driver nodded, reaching for the metre.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
On October 6, 1920 the city of Ottawa prepared for a riot. The mayor dispatched police to ring St. Patrick’s Hall. Inside, 700 Canadian Catholics, Sinn Féiners and sympathizers rallied for Irish nationalism. Eamon de Valera, a founder of the Irish republic, sent a note to delegates: “No enlightened Canadian will be able to stand by and see an unoffending people massacred.” Outside 3,000 Protestants from nearby Carleton County threatened to descend on the hall and crack heads.
Historian Robert McLaughlin captures the moment in Irish Canadian Conflict, a vivid account of a story now strangely erased from the Canadian experience, the clash of Canadian Protestants and Catholics on the Irish question.
Ancient hatreds from the old country were layered over all the raw nerves that jangled in the new homeland: English versus French, monarchist versus republican, wealthy versus poor. Irish independence was among the great political upheavals of the 1920s and there were more than a million Irish in Canada. When an Irish nationalist, Terrence MacSwiney, starved himself to death in a British jail in 1920, sympathy marches were held in Halifax, Montreal and Québec City.
“The siege mentality pervasive among Irish Protestants was transferred and even intensified on the colonial frontiers of British North America, where perceived threats from French-Canadian Catholicism and American republicanism were all encompassing,” writes McLaughlin.
It made for a hot time. The 1920 Ottawa riot was averted, yet in Toronto – the “Belfast of Canada,” they called it – street violence between Irish Catholics and Protestants erupted 22 times. Irish Protestants were “members of the upper class,” McLaughlin explains. Catholics were seen as dirty, lazy, feckless drunks, “the shiftless type,” as Toronto Mayor Horatio Hocken put it in a 1921 speech to the Orange Order, an enthusiastic proponent of Protestant superiority.
The Order boasted 200,000 members in Canada. Its influence was so great no candidate could become premier of Ontario without its endorsement. Guests at a 1912 Toronto rally included three alderman, two militia officers and one MP.
Yet Catholics gave as good as they took. “If I were an Irishman, as I am a Canadian, and it was my country that had been treated as Ireland has, I would take my rifle in my hands and fight to the last drop of my blood,” one supporter told Canadian Sinn Féiners. The speaker was MP Armande Lavergne, son of Wilfrid Laurier, and a future deputy speaker of the Commons.
The mainly Catholic Self-Determination League had some 30,000 Canadian members in branches from Charlottetown to Vancouver. One organizer, Charles Foy, the mayor of Perth, Ont., proposed mandatory teaching of Irish history in Catholic schools. Another, Liberal MP Chubby Power, told a rally: “The British uniform which stood for justice and freedom, has been made the instrument of atrocity, arson and murder in Ireland.”
Power today is best known as Canada’s minister of the air force in the Second World War. His grandson, Lawrence Cannon, later served as Canadian ambassador to France.
By Holly Doan
Irish Canadian Conflict and the Struggle for Irish Independence 1912-1925 by Robert McLaughlin, University of Toronto Press; 296 pages; ISBN 9781-4426-10972; $29.95
Canadians are “done with Trudeau,” New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh said yesterday. But Singh said he will stick to terms of a Supply And Confidence Agreement that would keep the Prime Minister in office until June 30, 2025: “We are not trying to plan for an election.”
Lawyers and schoolteachers are petitioning Parliament to reject private bills to ban spanking in correcting children’s behaviour. Two separate bills in the Commons and Senate would repeal a corporal punishment provision of the Criminal Code dating from 1892: “It is impossible to imagine how a parent could successfully foster their child’s development without ever applying reasonable and minimal force.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is still “exploring options” to enforce a ban on thermal coal exports he announced three years ago, says a federal memo. Thermal coal exports went up after the announcement: “This makes Canada the first country in the world to make this commitment to address climate change.”
Parliament must allow professional sports to self-regulate gambling promotions, says CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie. The Canadian Football League in a letter to senators said federal controls were unnecessary: “We do not agree.”
Building only low cost rentals is not the best way to restore housing affordability, CMHC said yesterday. The federal mortgage insurer in a report said mixed construction including expensive rentals was more effective in lowering costs overall: “I don’t want to be building cheap homes in a bad part of town.”
The Canadian Human Rights Commission yesterday did not comment on Chief Commissioner Birju Dattani’s past advocacy for Muslim prayer in schools. Dattani as a Muslim Students’ Association activist endorsed Qur’an readings at the University of Calgary campus and a local high school: “It seems clear to us he can no longer carry out his mandate.”
Independent MP Han Dong (Don Valley North, Ont.) has stepped down as co-chair of a Canada-China Legislative Association, records show. Dong as co-chair admitted to at least a dozen phone calls with Chinese Communist Party diplomats under security surveillance: “These conversations were recognized methods of diplomatic communications.”
Cabinet says it will publicly detail millions spent on legal fees at taxpayers’ expense for Charter cases of “national significance.” Critics have long complained of secrecy surrounding the Court Challenges Program: “No one is able to tell me who got the money.”
Voters just want to jeer or cheer politicians and “blame the government,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller said yesterday. The loss of a Liberal seat in a byelection Monday was not a confidence boost as cabinet seeks a fourth term, he added: “That’s a message we can’t ignore.”
Auditors rate a federal program to promote hiring of Black employees as a failure. It was launched following 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau join demonstrators in kneeling outside Parliament: ‘There is little evidence of increased career opportunities for equity seeking groups.’
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday blamed hard times for the loss of a longtime Liberal seat in a Toronto byelection. Conservatives won Toronto-St. Paul’s for the first time since 1988: “Can the Prime Minister still stay on?”
Police have recovered a tiny fraction of firearms blacklisted by cabinet four years ago as a risk to public safety, records show. The figures follow Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s deferral of a mandatory gun buyback program until after the next federal election: “People I know go hunting.”
