The Irish worker IN VICTORIAN TORONTO PART 1.

By 1850 Toronto was burdened with a number of social and economic problems related to the sudden influx of 1847-1848 "Famine Irish" immigrants. The Protestant population viewed the minority group of predominantly Catholic working-class people as an alien element. The Irish worker was at a disadvantage within the growing city, for the emerging labour organizations were secret oath-bound societies antagonistic to Catholicism.

Though the Church had little political or economic power, it aided the adjustment of its laity in a strongly anti-Catholic and anti-Irish environment. Fully cognizant of the injustice working men encountered, it came to terms with labour organizations in the 1880's and eased the entrance of its workers into them. This I will relate in Part II of this essay

The situation

Victorian Toronto's working class represented two distinctive cultural backgrounds: the majority Protestants whose quickly secularizing religion had become a culture, and an Irish peasant culture which had become a religion tied to the institutional Church.

Much recent Canadian labour history excludes religion as a contributing factor to the study of working-class history. The important role Gregory Kealey, for example, assigns to the Orange Order in the development of labour organizations between 1867 and 1892 may well be accurate. However, it was instrumental in the development of a Protestant working-class culture.

In a parallel manner Irish Catholic societies, modified by close ties to the Church, were productive of a counter-culture. The Jubilee riots, in Toronto in 1875, when Orange mobs attacked Irish Catholics, typified religious bigotry and working-class disunity. But Kealey and his Marxist-oriented associates would have it that within a decade of the Riots the old sectarian quarrels between Orange and Green were left behind. With the Orange Order in control of a large section of the working class, however, unity was illusionary and fleeting at best.

The relationship of the Church with the Irish worker in Toronto was an evolutionary one. Prior to the Famine migration in 1847-48, the Irish Catholic population had been a small, scattered group with minor concentrations in lower Cabbage Town, on the waterfront and Don flats. With the exception of a small middle sector of entrepreneurs, the group was composed chiefly of day labourers, carters, and a transient labour force employed in public works in the city and the province. Since they had been detached from their church in Ireland during penal times, superstition played a large role in the lives of Irish workers and they could hardly be described as Catholic in the traditional sense. Without a church or a priest to lead them until the late 1820s, the indifferent Irish in Toronto were fast assimilating into the larger population.

Bishop Power

In 1842, Toronto was established as a Diocesan See under the jurisdiction of Bishop Michael Power, an Irish Canadian from Halifax. He concentrated on the external signs of episcopal presence by building a cathedral and bishop's palace. By building the cathedral, the Church became an urban actor and gave the Irish labourer a chance to diversify his skills.

St. Michael's Cathedral was constructed under the direction of the English-born architect William Thomas. Although Thomas was buried as an Anglican in St. James Cathedral churchyard, he was a Catholic and, in the voluntary manner of the Irish workers he directed, wrote:

I promise to give the funds for the building (of) the Catholic cathedral as being a member of that Church the difference of the aggregate amount of my tender over the lowest sum that the roofing can be absolutely done for.

The Irish laity volunteered what few pennies they could afford, labour, carts, horses, lumber, bricks, and stone, and in the process learned new trades under Thomas' guidance. From that experience there evolved a group of building contractors who became proficient in the construction trades and later found employment in the emerging period of church and institutional building fostered by Bishop Armand de Charbonnel and his successors. Those contractors expanded their activities as industrial and residential building increased with the growth of the city. Furthermore, the construction of the cathedral gave rise to a group of Irish Catholic entrepreneurs who set up shop to supply the needs of the Church and the labourers. That helped to expand and diversify the middle sector of their population, and from it evolved a group of undertakers and professional men to service the close-knit Irish community.

The arrival of the Famine Irish immigrants changed the nature of the Irish Catholic population and broke the Protestant consensus in the city. Irish Catholics increased from 2000 to 7940 by 1851, forming 25.8 percent of Toronto's population. By 1900 the Catholics, though still dominantly Irish, numbered 28,994 and at 13.9 percent formed a small working-class minority in a city of just over 200,000 inhabitants.

Both the city and the Church were ill-prepared to cope with the social problems of the Famine immigrants. While the city hid in fear of the contagion they brought, Bishop Power died as a result of it as he and his few priests ministered to their needs in the fever sheds on the wharves. A three-year leaderless interregnum followed Power's death, during which time the structural organization of the Church fell into abeyance, with Gallican Irish priests throughout the diocese defying the authority of the temporary administrators. Material aid was almost non-existent and the immigrants were left at the mercy of the city's charities.

Bishop Charbonnel

Armand de Charbonnel, the second Bishop of the Diocese of Toronto, arrived in 1850. This French aristocrat made change a sine qua non. Living as a beggar, his lifestyle no better than that of the poorest Irish labourer in his flock, he made the Irish his people and set the standard for self-sacrifice by giving his family fortune to the Church and the Irish poor.

Charbonnel vigorously initiated a two-fold program: the reorganization of the Church government and the creation of institutions to aid the deprived Irish working class. He divided the vast diocese into three interlocking units, which reduced the span of control and allowed him to concentrate more fully on the problems of Toronto and its immediate hinterland. Evaluating the deplorable conditions of his impoverished laity, ill, starving, and freezing, Charbonnel utilized the Church's network to obtain funds, religious orders of priests, nuns and brothers, and the model for a lay organization, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, to serve them.

St. Vincent de Paul

The first St. Vincent de Paul Council established in the city in 1850 was dominated by the old, non-Irish Catholic elite. Its purpose as a voluntary organization was to dispense charity and to assist in the social and religious reorganization of the deprived laity. Beginning with a program of simple outdoor relief in which the members visited the poor and supplied food, clothing, fuel, medicine, and shelter, the St. Vincent de Paul Society soon gained the confidence of those they served. Because the members met the poor as equals, not as social observers, it was a society without class structure. But it eventually became an Irish working-class association. With Irish aiding Irish in the name of their Church, the Society became a vital element in the spread of Irish urban culture.

The members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society gained entrance to the hospitals for the sick, paid rent and taxes for injured and sick workmen, provided tools for workers, and found lodgings for transient labourers. They visited the jails and assisted in the rehabilitation of prisoners, set up libraries and distributed books and papers, ran night schools for untrained adults, and, to assure the education of the future generation, acted as unpaid truant officers in the emerging separate school system. In an attempt to direct the Irish towards means of self-help, the Society promoted housing co-operatives and established a fuel co-operative, an employment agency, and, with the Bishop, a Savings Bank to encourage planning for old age, children's education, and times of illness and unemployment. And to protect the religious rights of Irish Catholics, the Society was instrumental in the formation of the St. Vincent de Paul Children's Aid Society.

Women's societies

Parish-oriented women's organizations developed in a similar manner, complementing the work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. The first was instituted during the period of interregnum to set up an orphanage, employing immigrant Irish girls to care for infants who would otherwise be placed in Protestant homes by the charitable organizations of the city. The various women's groups obtained food and clothing from bazaars and picnics which they then supplied to school children, as well as glasses, books, and sundry items to hospital patients and female prisoners. They became involved in visiting the jails and courts, and aided in the social adjustment of released female prisoners.

However, it was the religious orders which were central to the expansion of a program for Irish Catholic social action. The Sisters of St. Joseph arrived from France in 1851 to assume control of the existing orphanage. They, like the St. Vincent de Paul Society, set up a system of outdoor relief, visited the homes of the sick, and began to teach in the schools. By 1900 they had developed the House of Providence, three orphanages, St. Michael's Hospital, St. Nicholas Institute for newsboys and apprentices, and Notre Dame des Anges as a boarding home for girls. In addition, they administered and taught in a number of schools. And, with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, they were instrumental in the formation of the Catholic Children's Aid Society.

Other orders, like the Sisters of Charity and the Good Shepherds, provided care for destitute women and prostitutes and set up industrial schools to train young girls.

The sons of the Irish working class were educated by the Basilian Fathers and the Christian Brothers. The Christian Brothers established St. John's Industrial School where young boys in trouble with the law were taught skills that equipped them to enter the labour force. Because of the close interaction between the religious orders and the Irish working class, a bond grew between the people and the Church. As the orders drew postulants from those they served, they too eventually became Irish in composition.

Anti-Catholicism

The Famine Irish had created a surplus of labour in the city, and it was generally believed that they would hire themselves at lower wages. Protestant workers felt threatened, and vented their frustrations against the Church. She had been tolerated when she was weak and subservient; when new church buildings, rectories, schools, and social institutions showed clearly her power and cohesion with Irish Catholics, her activity was viewed as a papal conspiracy. But it was the demand for separate schools--and the economic consequence of them--that became the major issue.

With the aid of George Brown's Globe, Egerton Ryerson, and the Orange Lodge, a Protestant Crusade began and the Irish community was under harsh pressure. Commenting on its results, The Mirror of April 3, 1857, printed:

"Catholic servants, Catholic labourers, Catholic merchants have all felt the effect in their business relations. They have seen with pain, not unnoticed with indignation, that every fresh move on the Separate School question, subjugated them--more or less--to reprisal of Protestant spleen and purgatorial malignity."

George Brown was consistent in his bias. In his evaluation, the Irish labourers, the transient poor, were "beggars, lazy, improvident, and unthankful". They fill "our poor houses and our prisons...as brutish in their superstition as hindoos," he wrote.

In 1848, the influential Egerton Ryerson, observing the plight of the Famine Irish, expressed the belief that the

"physical disease and death which have accompanied this influx among us may be the precursor of the worst pestilence of social insubordination and disorder."

Throughout his career, Ryerson's journal of education persisted in an anti-Irish, anti-Catholic approach in the separate school conflict. The opinions of those two men helped unite the Orange Lodge, the Protestant pulpit, the press, the public schools, and the work place against the Irish Catholic working class.

Facing such strong ethno-religious opposition, the Irish Catholic workers had great difficulty in finding employment in the city. With the consensus that 'No Irish Need Apply', the Irish Catholic press reported on the differential treatment: Irish Catholics were refused work as well as lodgings in boarding houses. An advertisement for the Bumside Lying-In Hospital stipulated that applicants for matron must be Protestant. In a satirical vein, the Irish press replied it might be advantageous if "she was something of a vocalist, and had by heart select Orange tunes such as 'Protestant Boys' or 'Croppies Lie Down'."

When, in 1865, a motion was put forward to allow the Sisters of the House of Providence the use of the Crystal Palace for a charitable function, Mayor F. Medcalfe was reported to have said

"that whenever Roman Catholics or their religion were encouraged, the community suffered...Should we allow the statement that we encouraged Catholics to go forth to the world?"

The Orange Lodge

The Orange Lodge dominated Toronto. George Middleton wrote that it controlled the militia and municipal administration. From out of the 80 mayors elected, only 13 were not Orangemen, and, as late as 1923, only 4 of 29 aldermen were not members of the Lodge.

Furthermore, through trustees and the inspectorate, the Orange Lodge controlled the public school system which fostered the training of pupils in its peculiar beliefs. In December 1897, The Catholic Register commented upon the Orange domination: of 767 positions in municipal employment, only 41 were held by Catholics; of the 255 positions on the police force, Catholics held 16; and in the jails and the courts, Catholics held none. Nor was there a single Catholic employee in the City Hall itself:

"It is said the reason of this rigid exclusiveness is the existence in the City Hall of two co-operating lodges of the L.O.L. and the S.O.E., and that membership in one or other of these lodges is an indispensable condition of City Hall employment."

Indeed, as late as 1950 there were no Catholic employees at Toronto City Hall.

Irish were the majority offenders in the police courts and were frequently arrested for drunkenness and fighting by the Orange-controlled police force when others were not. Regardless of guilt or innocence, being Irish was often sufficient reason for conviction before an Orange judge. In a 1987 volume, Harvey J. Graff observed that "Irish men and women, especially the Catholics, faced inequality in the Courtroom as in the market place." In order to escape the stigma and prejudice attached to being Irish, Irish Protestants abandoned the national designation and assimilated into the general Protestant society which was English and hostile to all things Irish. Even in the social institutions, those considered deserving poor were Protestants or hungry Irish Catholics turned craven for a bowl of soup.

But, as well, the Orange Order controlled the workplace, for most factory owners, managers, foremen, and lead hands were connected to it or to some allied society. In this realm the Irish Catholic worker had no protection. At the mercy of the lead hand, he was last hired and first fired. He had to take abuse about his nationality and religion and say little; to cause a riot in the workplace was irrational, for he could not win and would lose his employment.

The same type of differential treatment was applied to children. On one occasion, Irish Catholic children employed in a mill, knowing that the Protestant children had been allowed off on the twelfth of July to see the parade, asked permission to attend the annual separate school picnic. The request was denied with the statement "there are plenty of Mickeys to do the work." However, the children went to the picnic and the next day were refused admittance to the mill unless they forfeited a week's wages. They refused to work and were issued summons under the Masters and Servants Act. The Canadian Freeman (Catholic) of August 1, 1887, ended its account of the incident with: "God help the Mickeys and their children."

The Brotherhood

In the middle decades of the 1800s, the Irish worker could rely upon the Irish Brotherhood, or 'the children', for some form of extra-legal protection. It had arisen from an amalgamation of the older societies common among the workers on the canals and operated from the Don flats and the she been shops. As a vigilante organization, it offered the Irish some collective protection from Orange abuse and retaliated against episodes of stone throwing, name calling, and more violent outbursts. Within their own ethnic community, the Brotherhood exercised some form of societal control by punishing Irishmen who beat their wives and children. But it was an anachronism in the organized, industrial setting. With the rise of a modem police force, the Irish worker lost some of his apprehension on the journey to work as his children did on their journey to school. But once he entered the workplace, in most cases he was alone--the Mick, the Dogan, the Taig. By imposing isolation on him, Protestant workers did not realize tha t from it would evolve a counter-culture--for his mind was his own.

The Church

Under the exertion of constant pressure to conform, the Irish Catholic community intensified its relationship with its Church, its only bulwark in the unfriendly city. Concomitant with the expansion of the Church's metropolitan system, there was a growth of parish networks which included church, rectory, convent, schools, and hall with exclusive Irish Catholic organizations. And it was from within those parish networks that a counter-working-class culture developed and grew.

With its overriding emphasis on privatism, old societies like the St. Patrick Society, in which there had been considerable interaction with Irish Protestants, became obsolete. Many of the new ones were nationalistic but some, like the Hiberians, often caused cleavage within the community because of their sympathy with the Fenian movement.

For fear of jeopardizing the tenuous position of Irish Catholics in the city, the Church, with the consent of a number of its Irish adherents, denied the Hiberians the right to parade to the Cathedral in 1867. Within the group, religious sodalities and Irish Catholic benevolent associations flourished. The celebration of St. Patrick's Day which had been the source of open conflict with the Orange Lodge became more religiously oriented where Irish kin and friends gathered together for Mass and parties afterwards.

In the early days, the shebeen society had been the centre of Irish culture. Friends and kin met to drink, sing, and fight, to discuss politics and to plan the strategy of the Irish community. But the Church disapproved of drinking, and its condemnation of it through sermons, literature, and temperance societies reduced participation in the shebeen society. Drinking continued as a facet of Irish culture but became more respectable by moving from the shebeen shops to public hotels. Catholic bookstores sold religious works and articles, Irish histories, and novels. Parish associations sponsored libraries to provide this literature to the working class. The Irish Catholic newspapers were central in the creation of an Irish Catholic identity, keeping the community informed of events and activities both local and abroad. They were replaced in the 1890s by Church-sponsored newspapers which retained an Irish outlook.

Catholic schools

The separate schools in the city also perpetuated an Irish Catholic identity. In them, nuns and brothers of the same ethnic background taught academic subjects, religion, and Irish history, linking religion to nationalism and ethnicity. The pupils learned who they were, why they were here, and what their purpose in life must be, which instilled in them feelings of self-worth. Annual prize nights were well attended, giving the Irish community an opportunity to express pride in the accomplishments of its students and to enjoy a programme of Irish Catholic culture.

In 1866 Bishop John Lynch recognized the elements which sustained Irish identity among his working class flock:

"Irish history, Irish songs, Irish newspapers, Irish speeches at school, exhibitions, processions out on St. Patrick's Day to help keep up the Spirit of Irish Nationality in the country."

And as Irish Catholicism moved towards a working-class culture, the people and the Church retained certain elements of the cultural apparatus that had served them best in the past. Voluntary traits were utilized to create the exclusive Irish Catholic religious, social, and secular organizations. Through organized voluntarism which sponsored picnics, sporting events, bazaars, soirees, and lectures, the separate schools and social institutions were kept afloat. Irish Catholics from the hinterland were attracted to the larger events wherein Irish workers from the urban centre mixed with members of the rural communities.

Sunday excursions to the shrine at Niagara not only gave the working- class a social outing but also fulfilled an age-old need from the Irish past. The belief in the curing powers of holy men, like Father McSpiritt, and in the Plaster of Knock imported from Ireland, became an important part of their culture, transposing the past practice in the old country pilgrimaging to holy wells for cures. Yearly missions brought men, women, and children to the church to learn the precepts of their faith, role models for family life, the effects of their faults, and the need to accept their situation with Christian forbearance. Failure to make the mission met with group censure, for it was considered a denial of faith and ethnicity. The community was cohesive; one did not join it, but was born into it. Marrying a Catholic who was not Irish was almost like marrying outside the faith.

The unity of the Irish community was strengthened by a belief in an Irish Catholic millennium. The group was commissioned to perform a historic task--the conversion of North America--and the improbability of it was never questioned. The beautification of church buildings and religious ceremonies, coupled with a system of devotional renewal, intensified an Irish sense of the Holy. Through it, the Irish working class found solace in the face of urban rejection, consolation in grief, and hope in the future. There was no class distinction in the act of worship. In the words of a Protestant observer at St. Michael's Cathedral:

"No difference was made on the score of dress or appearance; a very richly dressed lady and a poor old woman with faded calico dress and plain shawl occupied the same pew; the rough garb of the labouring man did not debar him from a good seat; a cluster of scantily clad little children was carefully looked after; and there was that cosmopolitan character about the congregation that seemed to fulfill the prayer of Him before whose cross they all bowed:--I pray that they may all be one.

Fear of scorn, however, kept religion a private matter, for Protestants viewed Irish Catholics as a superstitious group, worthy of a derogatory stereotype. With the growing interaction between Church and people, priests became leaders in the community. Under their close supervision, many elements of discord were resolved.

Waking the dead

With little distinction between the material and spiritual world, the Irish, in their fear of the dead, had held wild wakes. The drinking, fighting, and lewd games attached to them had been a source of embarrassment to the Church, and, through the influence of the priests and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the wakes became more respectable, religious-oriented affairs. In a desire to maintain continuity with the deceased, the Irish had elaborate funerals and erected grand monuments, the costs of which were often beyond the means of this working-class population. To counteract this wasteful expense, the Church, through the Bona Mors Society, spread the concept that a good life was the only memorial needed. The Irish never lost the ability to laugh at themselves. Ethnic pride made them attempt to discourage the Victorian stereotype, epitomized by Irish comics in the music halls who brought laughter with "shure and bedad, who'll thread on the tail of me coat."

Within the context of Irish Catholic culture, modesty became a virtue and family life was idealized. Earthly success was played down; failure was measured in terms of morality. In the workplace the distinctive culture was masked. There were few fights because the Church had taught the Irish to accept what happened with Christian forbearance. When work was done, the Irish worker left the workplace behind. They had little in common with Protestant workers because there was no intermarriage, no kin connections, nor any mutual organizations in which they could join. Their voluntarism and organizational ability would later become an asset in the union movements. But they were to remain a separate entity because unions were mosaics, not melting pots.

To be continued 

Dr. Murray Nicolson taught Canadian history for many years at Sir Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, ON. The above is part of the series on Catholics in English Canada.