By Nancy Miller Chenier
Whether called celebrations, demonstrations, parades or simply walks, on the Glorious Twelfth of July in the late 1800s, the Irish Protestant Orangemen of Ottawa deliberately took their processions through the streets of the predominately French Catholic Lowertown.
Attired in their Sunday best and marching to the sound of fifes and drums, the Orange Order members followed a man on a white horse. This person known colloquially as King Billy represented the Protestant William of Orange, who, as King William III of Great Britain, had defeated the Roman Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Lowertown stories of real and potential clashes with Orangemen are remembered to this day. In the 1850s, R.W. Scott, who had established himself on George Street as a barrister, became Mayor of Bytown. Hearing that the Carleton County Orangemen planned to take a large contingent into Lowertown on July 12th, this Catholic mayor placed his carriage at the head of the procession. It was reported that no shots were fired, no stones hurled and no bones broken on this occasion.
However, in 1878, an August celebration of the end of the siege of Londonderry by James II was different. In the clash between Orange Young Britons and Catholic Union men, the militia was called out and nine men were treated for gunshot wounds, while others were badly beaten. It was reported that a lot of stones were thrown and in one case, “Father Bouillon was struck with a stone when the Britons attacked the Bishop’s Palace.” Meanwhile a gang of about 200 Union men moved through Lowertown “yelling like demons” and stripping the Young Britons of their orange and blue colours.
In 1887, the July parade was accompanied by members of the police force as it moved down Rideau to Cumberland and into Lowertown. The Toronto Daily Mail reported: “There, however, it appeared as if the Catholic residents were purposely remaining indoors, as there were few spectators on the streets, but large numbers at the windows of the houses.”
When it reached Sussex Street near the Basilica, the paper noted: “At this point, the sidewalks were crowded, mainly by French-Canadians, but no adverse demonstration was made.” The processions always walked past Notre-Dame Cathedral as they headed back to the starting point, and local lore claims that, on at least one occasion, King Billy on the white horse rode up the church steps in an attempt to enter the sanctuary.
In later periods, the Ottawa organization often took their July 12th activities to outlying towns such as Brockville and villages like Stittsville. In 1934, when the Orangemen of the city assembled at the Orange Hall on Rosemont Avenue, they marched west away from the centre of the city along Richmond Road to Woodroffe Avenue.
By 1969, the local Orangemen still celebrated the Glorious Twelfth, but acknowledged to an Ottawa Journal reporter that the society was not as young as it used to be and that young people were not interested in old wars and old causes. According to them, not only had patriotism ceased to be respectable but the British Empire was gone and Canada was being Frenchified. As one respondent commented: “Lots of good Protestants are taking cram courses in French.”