The Orange Order in Canada

David A. Wilson, editor

Nowhere in the world – not even in Northern Ireland – was Orangeism more popular than it was in Canada. When the Orange Order reached its peak in the 1920s, 60 per cent of the world’s Orangemen lived in Canada and Newfoundland. Toronto was so Orange in complexion that it was known as ‘the Belfast of the North America’. This collection of essays places Canadian Orangeism in its international context, examines the Order’s impact on ethnic and imperial politics in Canada, discusses Orange influences on Canadian Confederation, and analyses the reasons for the Order’s decline in the second half of the twentieth century.

David A. Wilson is a professor in the Celtic Studies Program and the History Department at the University of Toronto. His publications include Paine and Cobbett: the transatlantic connection (Montreal, 1988); Ireland, a bicycle and a tin whistle (Montreal, 1994); United Irishmen, United States: immigrant radicals in the early Republic (Ithaca, 1994) and, with Mark G. Spencer, Ulster Presbyterians and the Atlantic World (Dublin, 2006).