POSTING #151

THE ARTHUR DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL BUGLE BAND---TWO MEMORABLE PARADES

A few weeks ago I attended a Fife and Drum Band Program at Fort George with bands from the US and Canada. The experience brought back memories of July, in (I think) 1954 when our high school band---with its mix of Protestants and Catholics---played in two parades: one for the Catholic picnic on July 1, and a second on July 12th when we led the Arthur contingent in a march of area Loyal Orange Lodges, which took place in a nearby town.

First, a bit of background about the religious complexion of Arthur and the surrounding area when I was growing up.

I don’t have precise figures but my guess is that about 75% of the population was Protestant---split among the Anglican, Presbyterian, United Church and Baptist congregations---with the remaining 25% belonging to the Roman Catholic congregation.

The Roman Catholics had their own primary school, called The Separate School, but after Grade 8 their children attended the Arthur District High School.

Relations between the Protestants and the Catholics were generally peaceful despite the fact that the area had been settled, in part, by immigrants from Ireland, some from the North and some from the South. As in the rest of Canada, the Irish immigrants tended to bring to their new country their age-old religious enmities.

But although relations were generally good between the Catholics and the Protestants, there were occasional religious frictions.

When I was 5 or 6 a group of us were playing shinny with a tennis ball in front of the Separate School. During a break, a friend who was Catholic said he was sorry that I wouldn’t be able to go to heaven. I hadn’t thought much about heaven at the time---whether in fact I wanted to go or not---but I didn’t like the idea of being excluded. When I asked him why I couldn’t go to heaven he said that a nun had told them in class that Protestants wouldn’t be admitted because they didn’t belong to The One True Church.

When I told Mom about the conversation, she laughed and said she didn’t believe that God would exclude us Protestants. She said that I wasn’t to worry about it---and I didn’t.

On another occasion when I was about the same age, I was helping a retired farmer with a few chores around his house. He referred to a Catholic family down the street as ‘those dogans’. I hadn’t heard that expression before and when I asked Mom about it she became upset. I was never to use that term. When I told her who had used it, she shook her head and said that some people just didn’t know any better.

But generally the two communities got along well.

On one occasion, the heavy oak front door of the Catholic Church needed some repairs. The priest, Father Trainor I think, called on a skilled local carpenter, Joe Wilson, to repair it. The fact that Joe was an active member of the Orange Lodge didn’t prevent the priest from picking him for the job. And Joe, for his part, didn’t refuse to work on a Catholic Church.

We got along.

Now on with the stories.

       July 1st Catholic Picnic

Each July first, the Catholic Church had a picnic at the Arthur Fairgrounds. The celebrations began with a parade along George Street (our main street), and up Tucker Street to the Fairgrounds.

On this particular July first, the band assembled in the south end of town along with a few floats. When everything was ready, Dad, in his Ontario Provincial Police car, started out with our band right behind him, and the floats behind us.

We arrived at the Fairgrounds and came to a halt by the ball diamond. I thought we were finished but one of the organizers came up and asked if we could play ‘God Save the Queen’ to open the picnic.

Now, that was a problem. We didn’t have the anthem in our repertoire.

As the leader of the band, I tried to figure out which of the pieces we knew would work. We didn’t know ‘Oh Canada’ and while we knew ‘The Maple Leaf Forever’ it didn’t seem official enough somehow. I finally decided on ‘Rule Britannia’. We gave a rousing performance, everyone cheered and the picnic was officially open.

As an aside, not many of the people at the picnic would have expected that in a decade Canada would have its own flag and that in the years that followed ‘Oh Canada’ would have replaced ‘God Save the Queen’ at most official functions. In the 1950s, Arthur was fiercely loyal to Britain and the Queen.

After we had played ‘Rule Britannia’, our work was done and we were free to visit the various booths operated by Catholic women and eat their hot dogs and apple pie, or play bingo, or just take off for home.

July 12th Loyal Orange Lodge Parade

For the July 12th parade, we piled into a school bus and were driven to the town that was hosting the Orange parade. We located the members of the Arthur Orange Lodge, many of whom I knew, and found out what our position would be in the parade.  A man dressed in uniform with a large sword and riding on what was supposed to be a white, riding horse---but was in fact a gray Percheron work horse---would lead the parade as King Billy.

Perhaps a bit of history will be useful here:

From Wikipedia:

“The Battle of the Boyne …was fought in 1690 between two rival claimants of the English, Scottish, and Irish thrones – the Catholic King James and the Protestant King William (who had deposed James in 1688) – across the River Boyne near Drogheda on the east coast of Ireland. The battle, won by William, was a turning point in James' unsuccessful attempt to regain the crown and ultimately helped ensure the continuation of Protestant ascendancy in Ireland.”

In Canada in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, the Orange Lodge was popular and powerful, especially in Ontario. The mayors of Toronto were always Orangemen.

Queen Victoria didn’t want to have anything to do with the Orange-Catholic fights in Canada. When her son, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, visited Toronto in 1860 Orangemen tried to force the Prince’s carriage under an Orange arch in an attempt to have the monarchy endorse, indirectly, the Orange Lodge. The Prince’s attendants frustrated the attempt. Click here for the full, fascinating story

By 1954, membership in the Orange Lodges had dwindled in Ontario. Previously each town and village would have had its own Orange Parade but by the 1950s a number of Lodges would have to come together to get a reasonably substantial turnout for the July 12th celebration.

When our turn came, we started out with the Arthur Lodge behind us. Two men carried a banner with the name of the Arthur Lodge and behind that marched perhaps thirty men and women, looking smart in white shirts and blouses, with stern, serious faces. They were showing their support, in this public way, for the goals of the Orange Lodge.

When we arrived at the town’s fairgrounds those of us in the band settled in a shady spot, and waited for the speeches to finish so our school bus could take us back to Arthur.

There were a number of speakers all repeating essentially the same message: the members must remember ‘the Glorious Twelve” and make sure that the Catholic Church wasn’t allowed to use its power to destroy the links between Canada and Britain, and the Queen.

The first speakers were not skilled orators. They read their speeches, sometimes haltingly, and the anti-Catholic message, while it was there, was somehow muted. I looked around at our band members, especially at those who were Catholics. There was an occasional wink, suggesting that they had heard worse and were not upset.

Then a local politician took the stage. I had heard him talk at other events and knew that he was a good speaker. I wondered how this man, who needed both Protestant and Catholic votes to stay in office, would handle his speech.

I didn’t have to wait long. He started immediately with a lambasting attack on the Catholic Church and the Pope. I won’t repeat the charges and attacks but will just say that at one point he told the audience that they would have to be prepared to ‘take up the sword’ to protect Canada and its links to Britain and the Queen.

The crowd loved it. The members stood and cheered.

I remember feeling astonished and embarrassed.  I was astonished because the politician had always struck me as a moderate fellow. And I felt embarrassed that the Catholic members of the band were being subjected to this vitriol---I couldn’t look at them.

It was a quiet trip back to Arthur, without the usual horsing around. The politician’s speech had ruined the day for all of us, Catholics and Protestants.

Looking back, I am encouraged that the fears that generated the Orange-Catholic feuds have almost disappeared. And beyond religious differences, I am impressed with how Canadians have learned to accept differences of ethnic origin, colour and dress. For me, one of the major turning points was when the RCMP decided that Sikhs could wear a turban, instead of the usual hat, with the dress uniform.

About the politician: I have intentionally left out details so that his identity is concealed. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt, and hoping that he didn’t really mean the things he said---that he was just doing what he thought politicians should do.

I hope that was it.

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Note:

The next Letter from Virgil will hopefully appear in a couple of weeks.

On September 3rd, I uploaded Posting #11 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog---"Some Thoughts on the US Presidential Election and on the Republican Convention". See http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/