Post by earl on Apr 7, 2008 22:19:40 GMT
On March 10, 1967 an enormous explosion rocked the intersection of King and Jarvis when the entire east wing of St. Lawrence Hall—in the process of being restored to celebrate Canada’s 100th—birthday came crashing down, weakened after years of patchwork renovations. Not only did the east wing collapse that day (thankfully no one was killed) but with it went the remnants of Toronto’s dirty little war between British Protestants and Irish Catholics. Today a bland boardroom renamed the East Room occupies the site, but for more than 100 years from 1851 onward the east wing of St. Lawrence Hall was known as St. Patrick’s Hall, home to the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union. During its heyday St. Patrick’s Hall was used as a gathering place, community centre, music hall and lecture room for the newly arrived Catholic Irish who were not welcomed in our city by Toronto’s mainly Protestant population.
The two halls, although sharing the same building (originally known as the St. Lawrence Buildings), were completely isolated from one another, separated by an earlier and long-since-vanished brick wall. Heaven forbid the Catholic Irish should mingle with the English Protestants who used the larger St. Lawrence Hall for various no-Irish-allowed functions. The centuries of hate began in earnest at the Battle of the Boyne when England’s King William of Orange defeated the forces of Ireland’s King James in 1690, thus bringing Protestant Rule to a mainly Catholic Ireland. The newly arrived Irish, many of whom were escaping the devastating potato famine back home, made up 95% of Toronto’s Catholic population by 1880. They mainly settled along the waterfront in Catholic Irish communities nicknamed Slabtown, Paddytown and Corktown. However appalling life was in these stinking hellhole ghettos, 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 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 Twelfth, 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 1950s, to have any real authority you had to be at least two things, male and Orange.
From that day forth it was one long Orange walk well into the 20th century. 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. 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 in the streets. O’Donovan Rossa a Fenian (Irish Nationalist) from New York City, was to speak that evening but thousands of Orange Protestants—some with torches in hand— smashed the windows of both St. Patrick’s and St. Lawrence Hall and were determined to burn the entire building down if Rossa dared speak against British rule. Rossa, in order to get away safely, dressed as a woman and fled down the back staircase into the Market and out onto Front Street, thus sparing the lives of the 400 Catholics assembled in St Patrick’s Hall. The Irish Catholics who escaped the famine back home found some comfort at St. Patrick’s Hall as a place to celebrate their positive way of looking at life (the “dearcadh”); to move forward, thinking this too will pass, work hard, get an education and take the time to laugh. Thankfully the old hatreds are a distant memory but the original Irish hall that crumpled to the street below should have its essence commemorated by having St. Lawrence Hall’s East Room rededicated as St. Patrick’s Hall once again.
The two halls, although sharing the same building (originally known as the St. Lawrence Buildings), were completely isolated from one another, separated by an earlier and long-since-vanished brick wall. Heaven forbid the Catholic Irish should mingle with the English Protestants who used the larger St. Lawrence Hall for various no-Irish-allowed functions. The centuries of hate began in earnest at the Battle of the Boyne when England’s King William of Orange defeated the forces of Ireland’s King James in 1690, thus bringing Protestant Rule to a mainly Catholic Ireland. The newly arrived Irish, many of whom were escaping the devastating potato famine back home, made up 95% of Toronto’s Catholic population by 1880. They mainly settled along the waterfront in Catholic Irish communities nicknamed Slabtown, Paddytown and Corktown. However appalling life was in these stinking hellhole ghettos, 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 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 Twelfth, 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 1950s, to have any real authority you had to be at least two things, male and Orange.
From that day forth it was one long Orange walk well into the 20th century. 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. 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 in the streets. O’Donovan Rossa a Fenian (Irish Nationalist) from New York City, was to speak that evening but thousands of Orange Protestants—some with torches in hand— smashed the windows of both St. Patrick’s and St. Lawrence Hall and were determined to burn the entire building down if Rossa dared speak against British rule. Rossa, in order to get away safely, dressed as a woman and fled down the back staircase into the Market and out onto Front Street, thus sparing the lives of the 400 Catholics assembled in St Patrick’s Hall. The Irish Catholics who escaped the famine back home found some comfort at St. Patrick’s Hall as a place to celebrate their positive way of looking at life (the “dearcadh”); to move forward, thinking this too will pass, work hard, get an education and take the time to laugh. Thankfully the old hatreds are a distant memory but the original Irish hall that crumpled to the street below should have its essence commemorated by having St. Lawrence Hall’s East Room rededicated as St. Patrick’s Hall once again.