Monday, October 4th, 1875-
As was the case the previous week, the riot was the main story in the newspapers the following days. As was also the case during the previous week, each paper had its own take on the events. While all the papers were more or less in agreement as to what happened, they differed in their assessments of the why and the significance of the riot: they agreed on what happened, but they disagreed as to what really happened.
All the newspapers, with one exception, were united in their praise of the police department. They all stressed that, but for the actions of the police, the riot and its results would have been far worse. “The police were well lead by Major Draper, and did their duty,” wrote The Globe.1 They went on to say that they hope the officers injured will be compensated by their superiors. The Mail likewise found the conduct of the police to be eminently praiseworthy. “The police… behaved with great forbearance and pluck. Their admirable conduct was unanimously praise by all unprejudiced spectators.” They also hoped the police injured in the riot would be recompensed.2
The Mail, however, was slightly off in its statement: even a prejudiced spectator found the conduct of the police to be praiseworthy. Boyle’s The Irish Canadian was the most effusive of all the papers in its praise of the police when the weekly came out on Wednesday.
It is but simple justice to Major Draper- the Chief of Police- and his men to say that they behaved with admirable coolness and bravery throughout the riot; and if there are not today many a household grief and mourning over lives lost, to the skill and tact and nerve of the Police and their Chief be all the credit and praise. Let it not be said in the future that we have a Police Force that wink at crime, or shirk their duty in the most trying emergency; Sunday will always vindicate their character against such a charge.3
The papers were not the only ones to praise the Police: it was reported that the Catholics were preparing to make a testimonial for presentation to the police.4
After that, however, the papers diverged substantially in their representation of the events. The Irish Canadian once again laid the blame for the riot on the Orange Lodge. The main article in that paper on the riots, entitled “TORONTO AGAIN DISGRACED” begins
The history of the week ending Sunday last is a troubled and stormy one in the annals of Orangemen in Canada. Never, perhaps, in this country were the “brethren” so terribly exercised…5
Boyle’s paper being a weekly had to cover a whole week’s worth of events for his paper on Wednesday. He traced the riots through the council meeting and through the Orange Lodge meeting, and condemned the Wednesday resolutions for being devoid of any reality, and for condemning processions as being contrary to the dignity of the Lord’s Day, rather than condemning attacking people going from church to church as contrary to the dignity of the Lord’s Day. He tells how it had been hoped that the more mature members of the Orange Lodge might have been able to control the younger, but such a hope was found to be false. The Young Britons would not be lead, and thus they attacked the Catholics again on Sunday. Once again, Boyle claims to have been an eyewitness from within the procession itself. No processionist threw a stone, or fired a pistol. They all followed the repeated admonitions of the Archbishop.6 They were the very image of peace when the rioters attacked them. In later issues, Boyle would become somewhat more strident in his accusations against Mayor Medcalf in particular, claiming the Mayor could easily have stopped the riot far sooner and with far fewer injuries to the police if only the Mayor had given the order for the military to enter the action, as he yoked the riots to upcoming by-elections, and sought to remind his readers about how they were treated at the hands of Orange Conservatives.7
The Globe, on the other hand, rather studiously avoided mentioning the Lodge in its account of the riots. The rioters were, according to The Globe, from “the rowdy element” who were “bent on mischief.”8 The very title of the article lays the blame on some indistinct group:
THE RIOT YESTERDAY
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The Roman Catholic Procession Assaulted by a Mob.
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CASUALTIES AND INCIDENTS.9
They were attacked by a mob. The article never becomes more specific than that. The procession itself was described as peaceful:
As was anticipated, yesterday witnessed a repetition of the disorderly conduct that disgraced the previous Sabbath. The supposed exciting cause being, in both cases, a quiet and unostentatious procession of our Roman Catholic fellow citizens.10
The article continues from there relating the familiar facts, but for The Globe, the essential question posed the riots was, as it had been for the previous week, a question about whether the law would prevail in Toronto, or the mob. It found its answer in the conduct of the City Council, the Mayor and the Police and military who stood between the rioters and the mob that day. Unlike The Irish Canadian, which found that the police protected the lives and the health of the processionists, The Globe found that it was the rights of the Catholic citizens of Toronto that were protected, (unlike the rights of protestants that went unprotected in Montreal during the Guibord affair:
It would have been a lasting disgrace to this city and its inhabitants if any section of the population could have been prevented from resorting to their churches in the manner and at the time they preferred. It will be an evil day when Toronto, and Ontario, when it can be said that with truth that its Protestant majority have one law for themselves and another for their religious rivals. Freedom of religious opinion and practice is essential not only to its moral but to its material progress, and most thankful are we that while the rejection of the body of Guibord by a Montreal mob was condemned here, worse treatment was dealt to living Roman Catholics in Toronto without punishment. 11
It was a theme to which The Globe editors would turn repeatedly in editorials and articles about the riots.
(F)or we glory, not in religious toleration, but in religious freedom; and if we cannot permit every citizen his free exercise of his religion, as far as that does not interfere with the freedom and rights of others, then all our boastings about freedom are a delusion…12
This was the essential truth The Globe found in the riots: that the rights and freedoms of all of the citizens of Toronto had been upheld and it had been proven that the force of law would hold sway. The idea that the historical turning point for the protection of the rights of the Catholics in Toronto began the day after the riots with The Globe.
To be continued.
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