For The Mail, the days after the riot were spent justifying that the Orange Lodge was not the primary mover and shaker of the riots, but, at the same time, it was also not the Catholics who were the cause of the trouble, either. To that end they published the series of letters that went back and forth between Mayor Medcalf and Archbishop Lynch in the week between the two riots. Ultimately, however, they dismiss the question of who was at fault as they seek to defend the honour of Toronto once again against accusations from other papers.
We are very far from objecting to the spirit of the comments used by the Montreal Sun and other Roman Catholic papers of the Province of Quebec on the recent Sunday rioting in Toronto. We have ourselves condemned the rioting as strongly as they. Who provoked it was to us a matter of perfect indifference; our chief concern was that a perfectly legal procession should not be wantonly assailed, and that the law should be upheld.(emphasis added)27
A day later, the riots are gone from the pages of The Mail. They reappear briefly on the Thursday, as the paper responded to the Montreal Sun again, this time when the Montreal paper, invoking the riots in Toronto, said that perhaps the Protestants should cancel the Orange Glorious Twelfth parades, as no man has the right to give offence to his neighbour. The Mail responded tartly by saying that was precisely what the Protestants were saying when they sought to cancel the Catholic procession.28 Which, of course, was the point.
The newspapers continued to report on the riot for a few days, but, unlike the previous week, there was to be no more processions, so the urgency was gone from their reporting. The story began to die out. When the newspapers did write about the riots for the remainder of the week, it was generally in order to defend their earlier articles, or their preferred cause, or to score political points. The riots were invoked a few weeks later in late October and early November when there was a by-election in West Toronto. The problem that arose there came when the Catholic League backed the Reform Candidate against the Tory one, both of whom were Protestants, and both of whom had been supported and then opposed by the various newspapers in times past. The papers quickly got into a war of words, each flinging accusations at each other (and thereby at the parties and candidates whose organs they were) and claiming that the other side was trying to make the by-election sectarian in nature. Both the Irish Canadian and The Globe reminded their Catholic readers that, while not all Tories and Orangemen threw rocks at them a few weeks earlier, every man who did was a Tory and an Orangeman.
Whatever may have been the inclination or leaning of the Roman Catholics of Toronto towards the Reform party, there is no doubt that their course was ultimately decided to a very large extent by the outrage committed upon the peaceful Catholic pilgrimage a few weeks previously. It would be unjust to charge the whole body of the Conservative party with either encouraging or approving of those disgraceful proceedings. A great many Conservatives were, no doubt, indignant and disgusted with the conduct of the rioters. But those who aided and abetted were, to a man, Conservatives; those who, without aiding and abetting, spoke in deprecation of what the Catholics claim to be a right, were Conservatives; whilst the strongest expressions of disapproval of the riots, and the warmest defense of the rights of the pilgrims, came almost exclusively from the Reformers. Is it wonderful, then, that the major portion of the member of that body so grossly aggrieved should have been inclined to feel cool towards one party and well-disposed towards the other?29
The Mail fall back to it claim that it was not the Orange Lodge who came and threw rocks, even though some members did, but it was most certainly also members of the Orange Lodge who defended the Catholics weeks previously.
Mr. ROBINSON (the Tory Candidate- au), we are broadly and plainly told by the Irish Canadian, must be opposed by the Catholic body because of the recent Sunday riots. Was there ever anything more absurd? What had Mr. ROBINSON to do with those riots? What the party to which he belongs? Even if it be true that Orange Young Britons were among the assailants – and that is merest surmise- is it not also true that Mr. OGLE R. GOWAN, Mr. ANDREW FLEMING, and many other prominent Orangemen denounced any interference with the pilgrims? Is it not true that the Orange Sentinel, the organ of the Orange Order, strongly censured the assault on the processionists?30
After the by-election, the riots were again brought up in the news in connection with the Guibord affair, and once again found the riots proved what they had always believed to be true. The Mail of Thursday November 4 cited a passage from the Catholic paper the Montreal Sun in which the Catholic paper sounded remarkably like many Toronto protestants a few weeks earlier in order to prove the hypocrisy of Catholics, or, at the very least, to prove that protestants aren’t the only ones who overreact to processions, and to praise itself once more for its fairness and how it offered compromises during the crisis in this city:
(Quoted from the Sun speaking on the proposed final burial procession): “Madness!- because the promoters and abettors of this intended insult must not only calculate upon but anticipate, the probable consequences of their recklessness.”
Such language is greatly to be regretted. It is a plain incentive to a recurrence of the rioting which took place at the first attempt to bury GUIBORD’s remains. What would say the Sun, and the Catholic body, for which it professes to speak, if The Mail had used such language during the pilgrimage riots in this city! Our efforts at conciliation have often but a poor response from the other side.31
However, there was at least some hope that a corner had been turned, some resolution had been made. In this respect, issue was a Canadian question.
Let us hope that with the settlement of the GUIBORD case we have got rid of the last of a series of vexing series of questions which might have at any moment become internecine. The Manitoba troubles, the New Brunswick school question, “better terms” to the minor Provinces, the legality of Roman Catholic pilgrimages, and, lastly, the GUIBORD case, which involved the supremacy of civil law over the rights of the subject, have practically all been settled. Our new Constitution has been tried and found to possess the elements of solidity and elasticity necessary for the amalgamation of men of different creeds and races into a law abiding Commonwealth.32
It should be recalled that this was written in the same paper that also said this:
The authority of the Palace on Church street is quite enough to induce a great majority of Catholic priests throughout the country to instruct their flocks, on the Sunday before polling day, how they must vote, and with nine-tenths of those who are thus addressed the priest’s instruction is regarded as an imperative. Is this a desirable state of things? Is this a proper state of things?33
The matter of different creeds being able to live together was not quite as settled as they may have wished. For The Irish Canadian, in one the last times it mentions the riots, the idea of the creeds setting aside their differences, supplemented by the an occasion where that is precisely what happened, is cause for the exercise of the usual hyperbole, irony and sarcasm, and perhaps a glimmer of hope.
In Lindsay the exercises of the Jubilee were conducted by the Bishop of Kingston in person, assisted, of course, by the pious and zealous pastor of the mission, Rev. M. Stafford. At the close of the Jubilee services his Lordship received a gift of $800,00 from the Catholics and was serenaded by the Young Britons (emphasis original). Father Stafford thanked the Band on behalf of the Bishop, and handed them a little present. What will the District master of the “O.Y.B.” here think of this strange news? Truly, the brethren in Lindsay cannot be the genuine article- chips of the old block- and yet it will be conceded by the thoughtful and peaceable that their conduct bears more of the impress of Christianity and good-fellowship than that of those who talk naughty and throw stones. Let us hope, however, that the dawn of the millennium has appeared, and that the day is not far distant when the lion and the lamb will lie down together- with an assurance that the lamb’s place shall not be inside the hide of his companion.34
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