Thankful in all things.

Sometime in the 1940's, my grandfather, who was a groundskeeper and undertaker for our old church, ran into the Monsignor in the churchyard. Monsignor was looking at his hand with a puzzled look on his face. "What is the matter?" asked my grandfather.

"I was just given two dollars by Mrs Donnelly to say a Mass of Thanksgiving..." he began.

Mrs. Donnelly was a cheerful woman who had made a foolish mistake when she chose her husband. Mr Donnelly was one of the town's chief drunks. He was well known for getting on the bus and yelling "Charge!" as he staggered towards the seat at the rear of the bus. He was unemployed and, due to his drinking, unemployable. One of the few jobs he ever did hold was as a dance caller at the old dances that used to be held in town. It was neither regular nor lucrative.

The two had only one child, who learned drinking and irresponsibility from his father. They lived in poverty in their house, such as it was, and in the winter the three of them slept together in the same bed to keep each other warm, so they could save on wood or coal.

With the war, things got a little better for Mrs Donnelly. Like most women of her time, she could not find work that would allow her to support her familyunder normal circumstances, but with the demand for war labour she did find employment at a local rifle range. With her money she even managed to save enough to buy herself a few luxuries- a radio and a washing machine. Things were looking up.

And then Mrs Donnelly was diagnosed with cancer. She went to the hospital to have it removed, and when she returned to her home, she found that her husband and son had taken her radio and washing machine and had sold them to a pawn shop to pay for more drink. Not long after, the son murdered a man in a botched attempted robbery, and was sent to prison. He later gained notoriety as one of the first men to escape Kingston Penitentiary. (He escaped by sewing himself into a mail bag.)

Monsignor looked at the money in his hand. "I was just given two dollars by Mrs Donnelly to say a Mass in Thanksgiving," he said. "But for the life of me, I can't think of what she has to be thankful for."

Today is the 200th anniversary...

...Of the burning of York (the original name for Toronto) by American forces.  A brief overview of the battle goes a little like this:  York (a tiny village at the time, most of it down near the mouth of the Don) was situated on a natural harbour.  There was a small fort built at the time for the purpose of guarding the entrance to the harbour, which was actually a problem, as almost all of the defences were pointed to the harbour entrance, thus leaving it vulnerable to attack by land.  The Americans, lead by Zebulon Pike, (the Pike of Pike's peak) understood this, and instead landed to the west of the fort, near the Humber river.  They then marched toward the fort.  The British, severely outnumbered, put up some resistance, but soon realized they would not be able to hold.  They set charges on the grand powder magazine of the fort, and evacuated east towards Kingston,  leaving the citizens behind to fend for themselves. 

At any rate, the powder magazine went off with a huge explosion, killing many Americans (more Americans were killed in the blast than in the battle) including Zebulon Pike.  The Americans, enraged at what they believed was treachery, then proceeded to loot and burn all of York to the ground.  Today, the only in situ building still standing from before the war of 1812 is the haunted lighthouse on the Island.  It has stone walls over six feet thick, so good luck with burning that sucker down.  The second, third, fouth, fifth sixth seventh and eight (and possibly ninth) oldest buildings still standing in situ in Toronto are the buildings in the Fort, which was rebuilt in 1814.  (The Fort had one other battle in the war, when an American squadron, less smart than that lead by Pike, tried to force entrance into the harbour and was soundly driven off by the guns of the Fort.)

The battle was one of many turning points in the war (a recent documentary on the war rather tongue-in-cheekingly pointed out that every battle in that war changed everything).  the people of York, most of whom had come from America and many of whom considered themselves American and were at best ambivalent about supporting the British, were outraged that their "countrymen", so to speak, would rob them and burn down their homes.  After this battle, more Canadian settlers were determined to fight the Americans.  In fact, it was after this battle that many people began to think of themselves as "Canadian".

I now look upon the modern city of Toronto, and how it is governed and how it is run, and all I can say to our American friends and neighbours is this:  All is forgiven! Now, would you be so kind as to come back and burn the place down again?

Toronto, Now and Then

Today, Puff, Younger and Frodo and I headed downtown to St Lawrence Market to get Younger and I some peameal bacon sandwiches from the Carousel bakery.  For those of you who have never tasted this delicacy, you are leading a blighted life, and I pity you.

However, I brought the camera and took a few pictures on our little walk to the market, as we were walking through the older part of the city.  Here's some before, and afters.

Before, around the 1820's or 30's

Now.

 
Good Lord, it has hardly changed.

Then.

Now.

Everyone  who comes to Toronto takes their own version of a shot of the flatiron building, so I thought I would take my own.

Should have moved a little father back.

Typically among the older buildings, they would buy expensive bricks for the facade, and build the sides and the back with whatever they had, from whatever source.  If you look at this photograph of the aftermath of the 1904 fire, you can see people are going through the rubble of the destroyed buildings and collecting bricks. 

 You think "reduce, reuse, recycle" is a modern idea?  Take a number, punks, and get waaaaaay behind these guys.  They were doing it long before your grandparents were born.

The bricks would be reused in buildings later where they wouldn't be seen.  However, as happens, buildings get demolished, revealing the sides of the buildings next to them, and you can see the sides of these buildings, made with the whatever bricks happened to be around.

Just for fun, here's a face from the St Lawrence Hall, once the city hall of Toronto, as well as a concert hall.  Jenny Lind sang here, way back when.

Lastly, because one can never get in too much trouble with the missus, here's a photo of Puff Younger and Frodo, making their way along King.

Pieces of the past

Continued from previous post.  I'll pause for a moment, in case you wish to go and find a rat's hindquarters, so you can give it.  Got it? Okay, let's continue.

Every now and then I like to grab my camera and try and find what fire and wrecking ball have spared.  While there is really no old city, there are little bits and pieces, here and there, that have survived fire and wrecking ball.  You look down a blind alley, or around a corner, and you find a little piece of the old city still standing.   For instance, there is the building that now houses Tom Jones Steak House.

It is the corner of an earlier building, standing alone in the middle of a parking lot.  According to the website, the building dates from the early 1830's.  The door frame deserves an extra picture.

I don't know when the door was made.  It looks as though it has a little age, but not 170 years old.  Whoever made it was a master.

Around the corner of the building is a row of old buildings that look as though they date from mid-eighteenth century.

I can't say the name of the street, as there are no signposts.  Even Google maps does not give a name for this little lane.  The lane, whatever its name, was known to the early Catholics and bishops of Toronto.  The differences would be that the corner building would not be painted, and that the lane would have had buildings on both sides, the lane would not have been paved, probably a few beggars in rags,  and some of the buildings would probably have had signs saying "No dogs or Papists."

One other thing than modern visitors do not find in the old parts of the city, and they may be grateful for it, is the old smell.  By the 1850's and 60's, Toronto had become a manufacturing centre, full of houses and factories that burned wood and coal for power. Many houses had animals- pig, goats, chickens and occasionally a cow.  Indoor plumbing lay in the future, and, in addition to the horses and oxen that pulled carts through the streets, animals were often driven through the streets on their way to the slaughterhouse, so the dirt roads were generally covered in a  layer of manure.  And the people bathed once a week.  Usually.  The smell must have been indescribable.

Some of the factories are still around, as are the cottages that housed the old workers.  The factories that survived have been turned into condos, and the cottages now have BMW's and Escalades parked out front.  History has indeed a sense of irony.  I've written and photographed that elsewhere.

Some of the older buildings that have survived and are still used for their original purposes are, of course, the churches.  Not all have survived, and several of the protestant churches now house theatre companies, but many are still around.  Here is the home of some of our worst enemies of old, the current St James Anglican Cathedral, which was started in 1849, the second tallest church building in Canada.






As I said before, the Anglicans used to have money and taste.  I am an occasional visitor to St. James, as they give frequent organ recitals for free.  I'd love to do the same for St Michael's, except they're more concerned about things like "Mass" and "Confession".

St. James is actually a beautiful building, and deserves its own post, only not now.

Here is another home of our old enemies, the Metropolitan United, which began as a Methodist church.  It is said to have the largest organ in Canada, a massive Casavant,  though, unusually, almost all the pipes are hidden from view.  They also have regular organ recitals, sometimes accompanied by singers.  I'd love to sing there, that way I could say I sang at the Met. Get it? Huh? Huh?

I don't have any photos of the interior,which is quite nice and dominated by very large stained glass windows, with some excellent woodwork around the sanctuary, as the doors are usually closed to the church.  This is actually the second church built on this site.  The original church was gutted in a fire in 1928, but was quickly rebuilt with the help of wealthy parishioners.  The tower survived the blaze, and is home to a 54 bell carillon, (the largest carillon in Canada) which often plays on afternoons. 

(As a side note, the bell tower is the only bell tower I have personally climbed.  It was a few years back during one of the Doors Open Toronto days, when many historic buildings opened their doors to visitors.  I went there specifically because they were offering tours of the tower, and I always wanted to climb one of these.  While I was waiting for the tour of the tower, the organist stepped up to the console at the front of the church and ripped out an excellent performance of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.  Did I mention it was Canada's biggest organ?  Bigger isn't always better, but hearing that piece ripped out on several thousand pipes just hit the spot.   At any rate, the tour started soon.  We climbed up a narrow winding stairway, not made for big fat guys, that rose up through the wall itself.  We were allowed to go up right into the chamber that held the bells, where we were very strictly instructed not to touch anything.  The place was all bells and wires, and some idiot immediately says "hey, what's this wire for?" and yanks on it.  Naturally, it was the wire for the biggest bell in the place.  I can still hear the ringing.  If I ever climb another bell tower, I plan on doing so alone.)

Here's a view of Metropolitan United from the side.  The church in the background is St Michael's, literally across the road from the Met, about which I will speak more of soon.

The Torontos That Are No More.

I've been in a historical frame of mind.  At times like this, I like to think of my city, and the cities it used to be.

Unlike Montreal, which has Old Montreal, or Quebec City which has the old city, or Kingston, there is really no Old Toronto.  The "city" such as it was, was burned to the ground by the Americans in 1813.  It burned again in 1849, and again in 1905.  The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, oldest building still standing in situ are all in Fort York, and date from the 1814 rebuild of the Fort.  The oldest in situ building in the city is the haunted lighthouse on Gibraltar Point, dating from 1808.  The walls are over six feet thick stone, so good luck with burning that one down.

We really made little or no effort to preserve an "old Toronto".  The oldest parts of the ciy have all been built over.  For example, when the Sjydome, or Rogers Centre or whatever it is called now (after all the shenanigans that went on with that place, I thought we chould call it the Con Dome.) it was to be built on one of the oldest parts of the city.  Archeologists were attached to the work teams clearing the site to spot and preserve any artifacts that may be found.  They uncovered, among other things, a brass French cannon, possibly from nearby Fort Rouille, old bottles and crockery, and a Whale skeleton.  That last one actually raised a few eyebrows.  An archivist eventually found out how that got there:  a travelling cricus stopped in town.  They had been dragging a whale carcass around to show all the landlubber just how big one of these creatures really was.  By the time it hit our fair city, it had begun to do what all unrefridgerated meat does eventually, and rot.  A hundred tons of rotten meat must have put up quite a stink, and the city quickly dug a pit and buried it, and forgot it.

The point is, Old Toronto was swept aside for the new Toronto.  About the only place one can find anything that could resemble an "Old Toronto" is in archives and books, and the internet.  Here is the Toronto (Called 'York" at the time) that the Americans burned in 1813.

The buildings in the foregrounds are the original Fort York.  The main village, home to a whopping 500 souls, along with the original parliament buildings was further east, based mainly around the mouth of the Don River.  People who see the Fort today are often ignorant of the fact that the fort was originally placed to guard the entrance of the harbour (the fact that Toronto began as a port, and is still one today, is another fact that most people have forgotten) for it is is so far back from the water now.  The fort didn't move, but the waterline did.  The people of the city dumped the earth they dug up for making foundations into the lake, and have pushed the waterfront back several hundred yards.  You can see that in this painting of the old Front St. 

That wedge shaped building in the middle is a precursor to the current flat iron building.  So this view has been replaced with this one:

There is nothing from the early painting to be seen in this photo.  That city, and even the lake, have long since receded beyond memory. 

Here is a view along King Street to the east, looking to be from around the 1830's or so.

King was the original main street of York/Toronto.  Originally it was a road that ran between the Fort and the village on the Don.  By this time you can see that the city has been rebuilt and expanded from the time of the American conflagration of the city.  They are building important looking buildings in a classical style, attempting to give their work an air of timelessness and permanence.  In the above picture, on the right you can see the Anglican church (eventually cathedral) of St James still under construction, as it's spire is as yet unbuilt.  In another, slightly different slightly later view of the same street the spire is complete.

The church looks as though it may have been a beauty.  What can I say?  The Anglicans had both money and taste back then.  This church burned and was rebuilt in 1839.  This street, and this scene, was recognizable to the rebels of '37, to Michael Power and his clergy, and much of it would have still been around for the Irish famine refugees of 1847.  The church and almost everything else in this scene was destroyed in the Toronto fire of 1849.

Despite repeated burnings, the city of Toronto continued to grow rapidly throughout nineteenth century.  Cameras replaced paintings in capturing views of yet another city.

This is a view from the St Lawrence Hall, looking north. The scene  is of shabby workers houses and factories.  This photo can give a fair sense of the Toronto of that era: an industrial shanty town.  The photo conveys the congestion of the buildings, and convey how, even after repeated burnings of the city by the time, the place was still a firetrap.  Although the view from this point has changed utterly, there are still a few buildings from this picture still standing.

Among those buildings still remaining is the church spire in the distance, which is St Michael's Cathedral.  Notice that the city more or less ends at the Cathedral and the land beyond it is farmland.  The Cathedral, now firmly ensconced within the downtown core, was originally built outside of the city proper.  The church was consecrated in 1848 by Montreal Archbishop Ignace Bourget, but the spire was not completed until 1867, which at least gives us the earliest possible date for this photo.  I have tried repeatedly to find pictures of St Michael's without its spire- there has to be some, somewhere- but, alas, no luck. 

On the other hand, finding a picture of the new Anglican Cathedral sans bell tower was a piece of cake. 

This photo is another view of the old King Street, this time from the opposie direction of the two paintings above.  Though only separated by perhaps thirty years, the two scenes may as well be of different cities altogether.  The burning of the old Cathedral in 1848 gave the Anglicans a chance to build a bigger and more impressive Cathedral than the other Big Cathedral in the city- St Michael's.  St. Mike's was a ridiculously big building when our first Bishop Michael Power planned it in the 1840's- it could have comfortably held almost every single Catholic living in the city at that time, and was the largest church in the city.  Thus, when the old Anglican Cathedral burned down the  year after the Catholic Cathedral was consecrated, many Anglicans saw it as providential, and an opportunity to once again demonstrate who was really who in this city.  The spire, when completed, would be the tallest building in Toronto for quite some time.  It remains the tallest church steeple in Canada.  (The dome of St Joseph's Oratory in Montreal is the only taller church building in Canada. The twin steeples of the Basilica of St Anne de Beaupre are shorter than St James by less than 2 metres.)

A note about the two above photographs:  They were both taken at about the same time from the same place: the roof of St. Lawrence Hall, one looking north, the other east.  St Lawrence Hall served for a time as the city hall.  From the original city hall, we can see that the Anglican Cathedral is almost across the road.  The Catholic Cathedral is a distant view, removed from the original city altogether.  That was the status of the Catholic Church in Toronto's early years: best kept at a distance, far away.

One other note about the above photograph, and other old pictures:  They always seem so ghostly, a photo taken on a bright day of a busy city but with no people.  In fact, the exposure times of these photographs was quite long, and the camera would only capture images that were still and unmoving.  The street above may have been filled with people and horses and carts, but because they were moving, the camera did not capture their image, thus creating an image of a ghost town.  Rather fitting, it would seem, for an image of A City That Was.

More soon.

Gay marriage in Canada

Seeing as the debate is heating up down south of here, and the Canadian experience is getting invoked fairly regularly on both sides of the debate, I thought I would offer my two cents on what happened up here, and how, and why, and what I would have preferred to have happened.

The debate, as I recall, began with the issue of spousal benefits.  Namely, gay couples wanted to be able to claim the benefits for the plans into which they were required to pay, or the tax benefits which they could never have.  In that, I agreed.  Other aspects of the social safety net, like unemployment or welfare, we pay into in the hope that we never need them, but also in the knowledge that help will be available if we need it.  Taking their money for spousal benefits knowing full well they would never get it back nor derive any benefit from it, was a palpable wrong. The choice was to either exempt them from those payments, or recognize their unions.

The debate was circumvented, or ratcheted up a notch, depending on your point of view, when a gay couple in Ontario launched a Charter case, claiming that denying the right to marry was a denial of a fundamental human right, according to our Charter, or Bill of Rights.

(Side note:  The Charter came about with the repatriation of our constitution in the'80's.  It was decided that it was time we had a Bill of Rights like the Americans, but somehow they thought they could do a better one.  Frankly, the '80's were not the time to create a document for the ages.  Under pressure from feminist and minorities, the Charter was written to include the right not to be discriminated against on any grounds.  It sounds like a good right, but the problem is that discrimination has no definition: it can be anywhere, it can be anything, and right now, the person who decides if discrimination is happening is the person to whom it is happening.   There are people out there who are ready and willing, even looking for the chance to be offended at every possible turn. As it now stands, the right not to be discriminated against is a right that includes the right not to have hurt feelings, and the motives of the accuser were irrelevant.)

The gay couple found a sympathetic judge who overturned law and precedent and allowed them to marry.  The Government of Ontario mulled over this decision, and whether or not to appeal- they had every single legal precedent on the issue behind them, whereas this new decision had none- and opted not to, and they legalized it.  The Federal Government soon followed suit.  I should point out, none of these governments had raised this issue during an election, therefore none of them had a mandate for their actions.  And that is how gay marriage became law in Canada.  Some groups vowed to fight it, but the fight died out fairly quickly, as the reaction of the majority of Canadians was "meh."  Whether or not Canadians were swept away by a wave of tolerance or indifference is a matter of debate.

That is how it happened, to the best of my knowledge.  The action I would have supported at the time was not something that came up for debate, or was ever seriously considered, so I will outline it here.  I wanted the Government to get out of the marriage business entirely, and to recognize domestic unions, and to leave marriage up to the religious institutions.  I would have preferred it if we had a system like in Italy, where, if you get married, you go a judge and get legally married, then to a church and get sacramentally married.  I wanted this for a few reasons.  First, it would help protect the Church.  While it is convenient to have churches that do both right now, I think it could bite us before long, and I would prefer to have a firewall between government and religion.  Secondly, there was another group searching for spousal benefits at the same time as the gay community, one that is unfortunately not as well organized and does not get a sympathetic hearing, and was ultimately pushed aside and ignored as the debate became more heated, and that group was siblings.

It occasionally happens that some siblings, for whatever reason, never marry or move out and end up living together all their lives.  The benefit they were looking for in particular was survivor benefits, normally doled out to the widow or widower.  Almost inevitably, one sibling dies first, and the survivor is left in a  lurch, half the household income gone, and without any other support.  Domestic union recognition would have given them access to that benefit.  Notice, I am not saying siblings should be allowed to marry, that would be loopy, at least for now.

My solution was never seriously brought up, to the best of my knowledge, which is a pity.  I believe that this solution would have been hated by everybody and would have made everyone miserable, which in my estimation is the hallmark of a perfect compromise.

One of our Prime Ministers once famously remarked that the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.  That line was invoked fairly often during the debate, but ultimately it legalized relationships that are fairly much based in the bedroom.  It would have been better, in my opinion, for the government to say "We are out of this business entirely.  How you set up house is your business."  I know the objection: this would also open up the gates for bestiality and polygamy.  Perhaps, but not yet.  But, should these ever become legal, as it seems they might, at least they would not be called "marriage".

Chivalry's last hurrah.

Tomorrow is the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, at the time the largest ship ever built, and the largest moving object made by man up to that point.

The Titanic has come to mean many things to many people, and the story is rewritten with every generation.  Cameron has worked his own version, again, and peopled the Titanic with post modern self doubting men, and shown panic aboard the ship, despite the fact that every eyewitness account of the sinking tells that for the most part, calm reigned aboard the ship.  It does no justice to those who went down with the ship.

 For example, more women and children escaped from third class than did men from first.  When you factor in that the men in first class had first shot at the lifeboats, it means that every man from the first class who died on the ship volunteered to do so, that a woman or child might live in his stead.  Nor were they bitter to do so.  Industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim was seen dressed in his top hat and tails, sitting on a deck chair and sipping brandy and smoking cigars.  He gave a survivor a message for his wife:  "Tell my wife, if it should happen that my secretary and I both go down, tell her I played the game out straight to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward." He also stated:  We're dressed in our best and prepared to go down like gentlemen."   He was far from alone in these sentiments.  Many of the wealthiest men of the day went down on the ship. The band played Nearer My God To Thee in an effort to try and maintain some calm, and priests said Mass and distributed communion and blessing.  The captain of the ship commended his crew as the last lifeboat left, and told the crew they had done all that could be expected of them: "Now it's every man for himself." He was last seen on the bridge of his command, prepared to go down with the ship he could not save.

There is a desperation in those words.  Smith spoke them as a last resort: save yourself, if you can.  Compare it with the recent disaster of  the Costa Concordia, where the captain panicked and was among the first to flee from his ship.  Men on that ship were seen pushing women, old women, pregnant women, even children out of their way as they ran for the life boats, and as chaos and panic reigned supreme.  The men aboard the Titanic would have thought these cowards should be shot, and many would probably have volunteered to do the deed itself.  If chivalry is dead, the Costa Concordia went to the grave and relieved itself  there.

For me, the Titanic is a signpost marking the end of an era. Though I do not wish to deny the scale of the tragedy, I wish to point through the tragedy to the heroism and quiet dignity of these men and women who remained calm, yielded up their spot on the lifeboat for others who needed it more, and blithely stepped into eternity. Chivalry lasted beyond the Titanic, yet Titanic is chivalry's last hurrah, perhaps it's early farewell, and with a sense of timing rarely seen in history, chivalry saved its best for last.

Wikipedia update on St Mary's

A while back, in my little history of the diocese/archdiocese of Toronto, I included a post on the third parish established in what is now the city itself- St Mary's on Bathurst.  In that post I mentioned that the Wikipedia article on the church consisted of one or two lines, and the small amount of information contained therein was wrong.  I am happy to say that Wikipedia has a new article, longer, better written, and with more and more accurate information about the church, with a focus on archtecture.  I suspect the author was an academic.

This whole Wikipedia and internet thingy is neat-o.

Repost: Once there was a time...

(Just bringing up an old post.  I linked to it in the combox over at New Liturgical Movement a week or two ago, and it became my new most popular post, so I thought I'd resurrect it here.)

I  told this story at dinner the other night. The family liked it, and Puff told me I should write it out on the blog. Like most of my best stories, it isn't my story at all, but my father's, and like many of his best stories, it's from the war.

Dad was at or near the front lines in Italy one day when an officer came down the line. "Any Catholics here," he began. "There's a priest about to say Mass in the next field." Dad took his helmet and rifle and headed over to the next field, as did several other Catholics.

He was appalled when he arrived. The field was wide open, easily visible from the German positions, and exposed to any kind of enemy fire. The men immediately looked for a hill, a shell hole, a rock, a furrow- anything that might give them any sort of cover. Meanwhile, in the middle of the field stood the priest, carefully setting up his Mass kit on a big rock, taking his time and doing it properly, appearing as if he had no concern in the world other than this, and going about it as if he were in a parish back home, and there was no war to trouble anyone or anything.

If there was ever a time for a Tridentine speed Mass, this could have been it. But, to Dad's horror, (and he knew, because he used to be an altar boy at a Cathedral) the priest said the Mass slowly and carefully, doing every movement as prescribed, omitting no prayer, while gunfire raged around them.

At last the priest turned, holding the consecrated host. "Come to Communion!" he shouted out to the men hiding in the field. "I grant you all full absolution. Come!"

Dad's reaction was: "He's got to be kidding." But then he saw it: the soldiers making their way forward to receive communion. Granted, they approached the priest at a dead run, and left at a dead run as soon as it was received. But still they came. Dad, emboldened by the other men, came forward himself, received, thanked God, and raced away.

He stayed in his furrow watching as the priest put away his Mass kit as properly as he set it out, and, when finished and having said his final prayers, the priest snapped his case shut and walked away.

That's the story. Not the best punch line, but the family liked it. I like it for it reminds of a good man I once knew and shall never see again in the flesh. It reminds me that there were other good men like him, once upon a time. Men who believed there were things to stand for, things to fight for, things that were worth risking your life for. And on that list of things worth risking your life over was Mass, and the chance for Communion.

Ooh, a movie about Canadian History

Somebody or other has made a television movie about the first Prime Minister of Canada, Sir John A. MacDonald, better known nationally as "the guy on the ten", entitled John A: The Birth of a Country.  While I am glad to see Canadians taking some interest in their history, I always have some fear about how it will be handled on screen.  The wounds caused by the flat out disaster that was Passchendaele still ache in my heart. 

Who was Sir John?  Like the founder of the  that republic to the south, the man is a mystery to most Canadians, but he is a more human mystery.  George Washington is an iconic figure in American history- a general, a statesman, Cincinnatus reborn.  Sir John was, first and foremost, a politician.  Our country was not born on a battle field, forged in the storm of war, but was hammered out in back rooms and in political deals, and compromises, with a Constitution that was not conceived towards the philosophical goals of Life, Liberty and the individual Pursuit of Happiness, but to the practical goal of Peace, Order and Good Government.  Through our history, we have generally had Peace, and Order.  as far as the good Government is concerned.... well, as the song says, two out of three ain't bad.

At the heart of our origins lie a cast of colourful characters, French and English, orators and publishers, Freemasons and members of the Orange Lodge, and Green Fenians.  Somehow, they worked together.  At the heart of them was Sir John, a Scotsman, whose life had been touched by tragedy, whose wife was a laudanum addict, and he himself was a colossal drunk.  If people know anything about his personal life, that was it.

I heard a story of him which I hope was true. Sir John was in a campaign, when he returned to his riding for a debate with the Liberal candidate.  He had arrived a few days early, and promptly disappeared.   On the night of the debate, the Conservatives had pulled in a second stringer to fill in for Sir John, and were waiting for the debate to start, when John A himself reeled into the hall, looking every inch like a man who had been on a two to three day bender.  Which, of course, he was.  He took his place on the dais, shooed away his helpers, and waited for the debate to begin.  The Liberal spoke first.  He made a speech to begin the debate, and as he spoke, anyone watching Sir john would have seen him getting worse and worse and worse as he sat in his chair, until, just as the Liberal finished his speech, Sir John rose from his seat, and vomited over the entire stage.  "Sorry about that," he said as he wiped vomit from his chops.  "But he always has that effect on me."

Our first Prime Minister.  What a guy.

PostScript: Table of Contents of the Brief History of the Toronto Archdiocese

Here is a table of contents for the Brief History, just to organize and complete the whole thing.

Part One:
  Prologue: The Summer Everything Changed
 
  Chapter One: A Parish in Crisis 
     Part I
     Part II
     Part III

  Chapter Two: Moving Towards a Diocese

  Chapter Three: A Man For Toronto

  Chapter Four: Life in the New Diocese

  Chapter Five:  Disaster

  Epilogue to Part One

Part Two

  Chapter One: Interregnum

  Chapter Two:: The Second Beginning

  Chapter Three: Charbonnel's Parishes: St Mary's

  Chapter Four: Charbonnel's Parishes: St Basil's

  Chapter Five: Hardships of the Irish Catholics

  Chapter Six: Riot

Conclusion

  Prologue

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

 Conclusion

Conclusion of the Conclusion of the Brief History of the Archdiocese of Toronto

Previous


Everything I have written, I could have written otherwise. The history of the Toronto diocese could begin with, say, the activities of the Jesuit Missionaries in this area in the 1600’s. I could have told how the sparse European population of the area was predominantly Catholic until a flood of refugees- this time from the American Revolutionary War- came and made this area overwhelmingly protestant. Or I could have begun with St. Paul’s church, or with the founding of the diocese and Michael Power as Bishop. When speaking of riots I could have spoken of the frequent Hibernian-Orange clashes rather than Fireman, Clown, and Jubilee. There is a lot of history from which to choose, and a completely different set of choices could have been made. And yet for all that, I believe I have made fair choices.

For instance, I could have spoken of Charbonnel as he is frequently spoken of by historians- as a political failure. There are some grounds for this. He was often a divisive figure for his flock. He spoke English with difficulty, and with a thick accent. When he went to Europe to find help and bring back new orders for his Irish flock, he went to France, not Ireland. When he built new churches, he named them St Basil, St Mary and St Joseph, with no St Patrick in sight. The separate school system, for which he fought so hard, was finally legislated in 1863, three years after his resignation. If some of his flock did not warm up to him, he also did not warm to his flock. He wrote a short quatrain for his friends in France describing his flock in a far off land. In part it reads in translation: “I return to Toronto, on the shores of Lake Ontario, to a barbarous people.”

In spite of this I think I have been fair. The Irish famine provided the new diocese with its first crisis, arguably the greatest crisis it has ever faced. Though Power died a heroic death at the height of the crisis, he cannot be said to have steered the diocese through the crisis. That was Charbonnel, and his tenure amounts to a refounding of the diocese. The new diocese was characterized by constant struggle simply to be Catholic in a hostile world.

One of the points of this little history is to show some signposts of how far the Catholics had come, and how far they had to go. I spoke at length of the prejudices against the Irish Catholics of 1847.  The prejudice against the Irish Catholics only really came to an end when other minorities began to arrive in the city and those inclined to ethnic prejudice, including the Irish, turned against them. The Ukrainians, the Italians, or the Polish- take your pick. Thanks to the efforts of Charbonnel and the Irish Catholics, there was a church structure in Toronto when the new waves of Catholic immigrants began to arrive, and they did not arrive in a vacuum. They could find help and a spiritual home at the churches already built in Toronto. They began to fill the churches built by the Irish, and add a few of their own as they in their turn fanned out of the city and into the suburbs, to be replaced by another group of immigrants who came in their turn, made their contribution to the diocese, and moved on.

The other side of our story, the adversary of the Irish Catholics, the Orange Lodge, was very powerful for many years. As recently as the 1970’s they still had their “glorious twelfth” marches wherein they preserved their quaint habit of insisting on marching through Catholic sections of town, only in the 70’s that meant the Orangemen marched in celebration of how they (meaning the now thoroughly Canadian protestants) beat them (in this case meaning recent Italian immigrants) at the Battle of the Boyne. History is not without its non sequitors.

The Lodge is mostly gone now. Unlike Catholics who are bolstered by immigration from Catholic countries, British Protestant immigration dried up after the 1950’s. With dwindling birth rates and loss of congregations due to apostasy, they are little more than a memory in our history. Their marches, once made up of thousands of members, consist now of dozens. Their time has passed, and their return unlikely. The Lodge could be a cautionary tale for Catholics.

I could have written about the influence of Vatican II in the archdiocese, and perhaps have said something about the confusion caused by the rush to implement the council, or the council's 'spirit', at a moment when the old identity was unravelling and a new one had not yet taken shape, and its effect on the diocese, but much has already been written about that. Many bloggers and writers seem to be of the belief that the council was the sole motivator behind the changes which have taken place in recent years, and do not seem to acknowledge that the council was in part in response to changes already occurring.

The Toronto Diocese was born in crisis and struggle. Every achievement of the early Toronto Catholics was the result of many hard fights, first to gain, then to retain what they had won. Their identity as Catholics separated them and left them as outsiders to the majority of society, but at the same time it bound them each other and made them strong. History tells us that what is won with struggle may be lost in quiet and comfort. This is possible for the Catholics of Toronto. But History also tells us that the True Faith can sustain us through any crisis, even the crises of peace. I wish to retell the story of a man at War, this time the Second World War, the war after the war that created the new Canadian identity, who remembered that being Catholic is something worth any risk. The story begins with the man, my father, going to a Mass while at war.


Dad was at or near the front lines in Italy one day when an officer came down the line. "Any Catholics here," he began. "There's a priest about to say Mass in the next field." Dad took his helmet and rifle and headed over to the next field, as did several other Catholics.

He was appalled when he arrived. The field was wide open, easily visible from the Germans, and exposed to any kind of enemy fire. The men immediately looked for a hill, a shell hole, a rock, a furrow- anything that might give them any sort of cover. Meanwhile, in the middle of the field stood the priest, carefully setting up his Mass kit on a big rock, taking his time and doing it properly, appearing as if he had no concern in the world other than this, and going about it as if he were in a parish back home, and there was no war to trouble anyone or anything.

If there was ever a time for a Tridentine speed Mass, this would have been it. But, to Dad's horror, (and he knew, because he used to be an altar boy at a Cathedral) the priest said the Mass slowly and carefully, doing every movement as prescribed, omitting no prayer while gunfire raged around them. At last the priest turned, holding the consecrated host. "Come to Communion!" he shouted out to the men hiding in the field. "I grant you all full absolution. Come!"


Dad's reaction was: "He's got to be kidding." But then he saw it: the soldiers making their way forward to receive communion. Granted, they approached the priest at a dead run, and left at a dead run as soon as it was received. But still they came. Dad, emboldened by the other men, came forward himself, received, thanked God, and raced away.


He stayed in his furrow watching as the priest put away his Mass kit as properly as he set it out, and, when finished and having said his final prayers, the priest snapped his case shut and walked away.


As long as Catholics remember that our faith, our spiritual home and source of our spiritual food is worth taking risks over, worth sacrificing for, worth struggling for, there will be an Archdiocese of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Part 3 of the Conclusion of the Brief History of the Archdiocese of Toronto

Previous

The changes started by the First World War in the life of the diocese of Toronto are only visible in retrospect. To those who lived at the time, it probably seemed as if very little had changed at all. Many of the changes which were to drastically change the Catholic community in Toronto probably weren't noticed at first, if at all.

Take news for example. For much of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the various governments used to send announcements around to the churches to be read from the pulpit on Sundays. This was an effective way of getting news out at that time, as church was something almost everyone attended in one denomination or another. Then the Government found other ways to disseminate news, and their announcements were no longer sent around to the churches. It probably made little difference, but it was a change. Church used to be a place where people could get the news. Now it wasn't. Did people stop attending on that account? Probably not. But they now had one less reason to attend.

The ties that bound people to their churches were loosed or cut in dozens of different ways. There were the sports teams. People liked cheering on their teams, then as well as now. But back then, if you wished to see a sporting event, you saw a live one, and then it would most likely be amateurs. Going to see a professional team, the Leafs, for example, was something that could only be done on a rare occasion. But then, in 1923, Foster Hewitt began his famous play by play broadcasts of hockey games. Fans could now follow games they could not attend, even those of the professional teams. Interest in the amateur teams began to wane as the radio broadcasts caught on.

Another nail in the parish league coffin occurred when the city of Toronto began to build its own community centers, which offered their own sporting leagues, but with better facilities. The old church leagues couldn't compete, and folded quickly. The community centres also took on a range of activities which also encroached into the old church hall activities. People came to their church a little less often.

Radio and sound recordings also hurt another part of the church life: the recitals and concerts that appeared regularly on the church calendars. People could now hear music from a famous performer any time they wished, so there was little want or need to see a local performer, no matter how talented. People came to their church a little less often.

Other changes took other chips out of the church community. Changes in the building codes meant that churches could no longer be built by teams of volunteers armed with shovels. They needed to be made by professionals, with professional equipment. A decline in skilled tradesmen meant that the average parish no longer had enough skilled artisans who were capable of repairing, or decorating the church. Instead, hired professionals handle most of the repairing and decorating of churches. That personal tie to the building itself disappeared. A change in gambling laws allowed the opening of large, dedicated bingo halls, which ran 24 hours a day, and offered huge purses. The old church bingo night, with a grand prize of maybe five hundred dollars, simply could not compete. Another activity was lost. Another reason to go to the church building was lost. Chip.

Perhaps the two biggest changes came from two inventions which changed the way of life for everyone in the city: the car, and the television.

Prior to the widespread use of the car, people lived in tightly knit communities. Neighbours often worked at the same place, drank at the same bar, prayed at the same church. After the car, people spread out. They could live miles from their place of work, where none of their neighbours worked. They did not hang around after work, or spend time walking home with their coworkers. They left to their distant home, and would neither see nor speak with, nor have anything at all to do with their coworkers until the next day. That also became the pattern of worship. Their fellow Catholics were people they only saw on Sunday, often at a church which was distant from their own homes. Their ties to the people of their church was less than the ties to the people at work.

Their own homes became the focus of life with the second invention: the television. Now people were entertained at home, as they spent more and more time in their homes than ever before, more often than not staring at a piece of furniture. Whereas people had once attended functions in their church basement for entertainment, entertainment now came directly into their homes. Church functions became more scarce, and less well attended. Plays, lectures, debates, and recitals all vanished. People increasingly isolated themselves from their neighbours. The church had been the center of the community. The community no longer existed.

And so, people came to church far less often than they did in the past. Because of cars and driving, it became far less common for people to simply pop into the church as they were passing by. And so the churches began to stand empty, all day long. They were a target for thieves and vandals, empty and unprotected. Before long, most churches locked their doors. Now the people couldn't come in for any reason other than Mass. Many people, feeling no particular tie to their church any longer, and discouraged by the scandals that were erupting at that time, stopped coming even for that.

And yet, an autopsy and internment of the Archdiocese of Toronto would be premature. The same forces which affected the Church in Toronto also hit the other Christian denominations in equal measure, and yet 25-30% of the people in Toronto who call themselves Catholic still attend Sunday Mass regularly, more than double any other denomination. They are faring far worse.

So perhaps the question isn't, what happened to the Church in Toronto, but why wasn't it worse?

Part of the answer seems to be immigration. Catholics from other countries still come to Toronto, and perhaps it is their numbers which swell our churches' ranks. But there is another answer as well: We're still right. At the heart of our faith lies a sacred truth, the sacred sacraments. It sustained the starving Irish. It can sustain us still.

The survival of the Archdiocese in the future may be a struggle, but, as I believe I have shown in this brief history, it has always been a struggle, whether against famine and disease, or politics, bigotry, or the changes of society. I suspect it always shall be a struggle. We were promised that Hell would not prevail. We were never promised we would have an easy time of it.

Next

Part Two of the Conclusion of the Brief History of the Early Toronto Diocese

Previous

In the early morning hours of Easter Monday, 1917, the men of the Canadian Expeditionary Force huddled low in the trenches, waiting for zero hour. For the first time, the four divisions of the CEF had been brought together into a single unit, the Canadian Corps. For months they had trained for this day. The seconds ticked by slowly until, suddenly, with a thundering crash, their guns roared into life. The ground before them exploded high into the air, screening them from the view of the Germans. They rose from their trenches and began their advance, just as they had been training for months to do. The attack on Vimy ridge had begun.

The Canadians were not the first to attack the ridge. The French and British had repeatedly tried to take the ridge from the Germans earlier in the war. Together they suffered 150,000 casualties in their failed attempts. Now the Canadians would try and take the Ridge.

The men of the Canadian Corps had come from across Canada. French and English, Native and White, Catholic and Protestant had volunteered. Men who would have had nothing to do with each other back home served side by side, fought together, relaxed together, and even died together. The old divisions were gone. They had no place in this brotherhood.

The attack on Vimy had been carefully planned down to the minute. The commanders of the British army had thought the Corps commanders were insane, but did not interfere with the plans. They never expected the attack to work in the first place. It is not commonly known, but Vimy was a diversion. The main attack was to be in the south, where French Field Marshall Nivelle had come up with a plan that was supposed to end the war in a matter of weeks.

The Canadians marched forward on schedule. Into heavy fire they advanced, each unit taking their objectives, mopping up, holding position while another unit leapfrogged over them, and continued the advance. By the end of the day, nearly all objectives had been secured, and the Canadians had made the largest single day advance since the beginning of trench warfare. The diversion was a success. The rest of Nivelle's offensive failed miserably.  Parts of the French army mutinied against the waste of their lives by incompetent commanders.

The Canadians took great pride in their success. They had captured an objective no other army could take. For the rest of the war the Canadians became the preferred shock troops of the British Army. According to legend, the Germans even came up with a new word to describe the Canadians: Stormtroopers.

The reputation came at a heavy cost. Of the 450,000 men who served overseas, one in seven, over 60,00 men, died. Another 170,000 were wounded. Over half the Canadian Corps became casualties. According to modern psychology, when a unit suffers more than 20% casualties, the survivors suffer irreparable psychological damage. The next generation of Canadians would largely be raised by men who, by modern standards, were not wholly sane.

The impact of the war can be seen in many of the older churches of Toronto. Many of them have plaques outside, or just inside the doors, dedicated to the men of the parish who died for King and Country in the Great War. Many of them have very long lists of names. Every member of the tightly knit church community would have known someone who had died.

The question of why the Roman Catholics- still predominantly Irish- signed up can only be speculated. War fever gripped English Canada in ways it never did French Canada. The Catholics may not have been immune. By now they often worked jobs with Protestants, developed friendships- perhaps that bond drew them into the conflagration. Whatever the cause, in numbers they answered the call and served Canada well and with honour in what was arguably the greatest crisis this country ever faced.

Ironically, their service was in the name of a cause decried by the leader of their faith, Pope Benedict XV, who called the war “the suicide of Europe” and who was said to be so distraught over the war that his grief shortened his life. In 1918, archbishop Neil McNeil saw fit to issue a pamphlet entitled "The Pope and the War." Benedict repeatedly sought to broker peace deals between the sides, only to be repeatedly rebuffed, to the point that the French and British jointly declared him to be irrelevant, and agreed not to answer any further telegrams from him. Meanwhile, men were dying like never before.

To make sense of disasters and massacres, people often turn to faith and to myths. The Protestant myths are well documented. To Protestant societies that promoted the Empire, such as the Orange Lodge, the First World War was a glorious sacrifice, a reaffirmation of the covenant between the colonies and the Empire written in blood. The Catholics of Toronto had no recourse to that myth, so it is possible they bought into the nationalist myth: that Canada was born on the slopes of Vimy, and at Lens and Hill 70, through the bloody slaughter of Passchendaele, and on through Amiens, Drocourt-Queant, Canal du Nord, Cambrais and all the battles where the Canadian troops fought and won, and distinguished themselves as an unparalleled fighting force on the fields of France and Belgium.

Perhaps the Catholics of Toronto availed themselves of the myth. Perhaps they thanked God for their survival and tried to get on with the life they had left behind. But the trenches had changed them in many ways. They had been of a brotherhood, united despite religion or ethnicity. Perhaps for the first time in the history of the Diocese of Toronto the Catholic identity, forged through the trials of prejudice and the struggles started by Charbonnel to remain separate had been set aside for a new identity, that of “Canadian”. Canada's tragedy and glory of the war may have resulted in a subtle undermining of Tridentine Catholic identity in the diocese of Toronto.

Prior to the war, the Catholic identity was a kind of default position. They were not allowed to have any other identity. But the war changed that. They now had another option. Catholics came home Canadians. They were now part of society. The tightly knit communities, shut out as much as they were shut in, were now part of a larger community. At first, the difference was probably not noticeable. But a little chip had been knocked away, or perhaps, not so little a chip. More chips were to come that would erode away, bit by bit, at the Catholic identity of the Toronto faithful.

Next

Part One of the Conclusion of the Brief History of the Diocese of Toronto

Previous

Most histories of the Church or of any diocese usually focus on the bishops or the top priests. I have decided to turn away from that course now. Bishops came and went, as Bishops are wont to do. Most of them were decent fellows, worked hard, kept the diocese up and running, handed it off to the next guy. Each could easily have a book or books written about him, or a blog. But my theme, so far, has been the identity of Catholics in Toronto. The bishops, particularly Power and Charbonnel, played a huge role in establishing this identity. We have seen this identity put to the test and attacked, and we have seen it survive and triumph. But, then what? In the conclusion of this piece, we shall turn and look at what it meant to be a Catholic in a time of non- crisis, say, from about 1880 to around the Great Depression or so. I am trying to examine what was it like to be an average Catholic, and, lastly, to turn an eye towards the question what happened to the Church Toronto in the last half of the twentieth century?

While there was no great crisis in this period, it would be wrong for me to leave the impression that the Jubilee Riots of 1875 brought an end to all the problems faced by the Catholics of Toronto. The Green and the Orange would clash again and again in the coming years. Signs bearing the legend "No papists or dogs" were still to be seen in shop windows well into the Twentieth Century. Even when Catholics could find work, they often found themselves stranded on the lower positions. In Maureen Jennings' meticulously researched (but also deeply flawed) Detective Murdoch books, set in 1890's Toronto, Murdoch is acutely aware that, as a Catholic, his chances for promotion in the police force of a city of Orange men and Freemasons are non existent.

Anti-Catholic prejudice sometimes took strange forms, and does not always appear, at first glance, to be specifically anti Catholic, and occasionally seems almost whimsical. For example, in the early years of the twentieth century, Toronto council, made up mainly of well off Protestants, were considering a pressing problem of the day: tobogganing. At the time, working class (largely Catholic) parents often worked fourteen hours a day, five days a week, with a half day on Saturday. The only day off to play and enjoy themselves was Sunday. In winter time, one of the easiest and cheapest forms of entertainment was tobogganing. The family would get some kind of sled, usually made by the father, head for the nearest snow covered hill, and then spend a day laughing as they sped down the slope again and again.

The city council was horrified. Unlike the Catholics, whose religion allowed the faithful to enjoy Sunday any way they saw fit once they had fulfilled their obligation and gone to Mass, the Protestants treated Sunday far more seriously, and felt the sight of Catholic families out in the snow, laughing and playing, was a sort of blasphemy. The papists, the protestants thought, should be more sober and spend their Sunday in a more spiritually profitable manner, such as contemplating their souls' damnation. So, in 1912, council passed the Lord's Day Act, which banned tobogganing on Sunday's. The law stayed on the books until the 1961. (Incidentally, skating, which was not banned, suddenly became the most popular Sunday afternoon wintertime activity.)

The Catholic population was also beginning to change. By the end of the Nineteenth century, Irish Catholics constituted 75% of the Catholic population, as new immigrants, particularly Italians, began to arrive on the shores of Toronto. The Catholic population would change many times over in the coming century. Perhaps no greater example of this can be found than the fate of the sixth church built in the city, and the third oldest still standing, the original St Patrick's. Built in 1861, the Irish Catholics finally had a church named for their patron. In 1905, the growing congregation built a larger church, the current St Patrick's, but left the original church still standing. That church was renamed Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and turned into an Italian parish. In time it would be a Portuguese parish, and then the home of the Mandarin Chinese Catholic community. The new St Patrick's is now, among other things, the home of the German speaking Catholic community in Toronto.

One thing the Catholics had in common, whatever their origin, is that they were usually on the bottom rung of the social ladder. The average Catholic worked as a labourer, lived in low cost housing in one of the areas of Toronto. To understand them, we must first examine a little more of working class life in Toronto.

First thing, at the time, there wasn't really a Toronto. Or, there was, but it was more like a continuous collection of villages, or neighbourhoods. Some of the names have stayed with us to today, somewhat, with names like Kensington, or the Junction, or Corktown and Cabbagetown. A walk through some of the areas of city allows one to still see the old villages. These small regions in Toronto were usually self contained, with a main street which had a series of shops- butcher, groceries, shoe, tailor, barber, later on a movie theatre, a larger employer in the area of some sort, and a church, or often several churches of various denominations. People tended to stay within their area, and a trip out of the area was usually a special occasion.

The houses where working class people lived at the turn of the century are often still around, and ironically, their houses are often sought out by the young and upwardly mobile. The houses are usually close together, often with a frontage of fourteen to sixteen feet. Out front is a porch, which looks out into the public world of the street. Inside there is a small front room or parlour, a small dining room and a small kitchen, Upstairs is a bathroom and two or three bedrooms. The backyards of such places are likewise tiny, mostly taken up by a garage now. Back then, the yard was either a garden, or a place for animals, such as chickens, goats, pigs, occasionally a cow and, for a few, a horse. Even the backyard worked for food for the family.

These tiny houses were often the home of large families, four or more children were not uncommon, all squeezed into the house. If you were to ask how so many people could live in such a small house, the answer is, simply, they didn't. Not in the modern sense of how people live in a house. They ate at home, they slept at home, and not a lot more. They spent much of their lives outside the house, at work, or at a shop, or sitting on the porch in the cool of the summer evening, while other neighbours promenaded up and down the road, and the children played some game in the street. The priests of the local church were very much visible at this time, also frequently taking walks in the evening, greeting their parishioners. It was common for a Catholic to call out to a priest as they passed "Bless me father!" The priests would also stop and talk with parishioners and friends. They, too, were an integral part of the neighbourhood.

This life outside the house created some of the strongest bonds and biggest problems of the life of these old neighbourhoods. It has been said that the best thing about life in a small town is that everyone knows everyone else. It has also been said that the worst thing about life in a small town is that everyone knows everyone else. The adults of these neighbourhoods all knew each other. they worked together, shopped at the same stores, got haircuts together, drank, if they were so inclined, at the local pub (legal or less so) and prayed at the same church. One of the problems of these strong ties is that their children also knew each other.

As is the case today, it was common at the time for both parents to work in order to make ends meet. That meant the children were more or less unsupervised for much of the day. They, like their parents, lived outside he house, and formed their own close ties with other local children, except in their case, the ties they formed lead to the creation of what we would today call "youth gangs."

Toronto in late nineteenth and early twentieth century was in the grip of a crime wave, and idle, poor youth were to blame. The newspapers reported new crimes every day. In one daring escapade, a gang of boys pulled off a successful heist of a bakery delivery truck, and stole every pie it carried. Horrifying news at the time. It seems almost quaint to us today. My own father used to tell me stories of his criminal adventures in the west end of Hamilton during the Depression, when he ran amok with his own gang, a gang made up of boys who met as altar boys at the new Christ the King Cathedral.

Despite the crime rate, it was rare to lock one's doors. Often, the young criminals, when fleeing, would dart through an open door and run out the back of the house to escape pursuit. A family may have been sitting at dinner, when suddenly the door may burst open and a young neighbour come racing through, saying "Hi Mrs C! Bye Mrs C!" as they raced out the back.

One of the most important institutions in these old neighbourhoods was the local church. Just as the neighbourhoods were different back then, so was the role of the church. Today, most Catholics only go to their church on Sunday, if at all, for Mass. Many churches today are only open for Mass, and quite a few only for Sunday Mass. Back then, the doors of the church were never locked, and in addition to Mass, the churches commonly offered a large range of devotions. Catholics were often praying at church a few times a week, and not even for a service. It was common for a Catholic who was just passing by to pop into church and say a few prayers, or light a candle. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. People did much more at church than attend Masses and prayer services.

A second way they were involved with the life of the parish was in serving the Mass or the church. Choirs and altar guilds are still with us today, but back then, they tended to be much larger. It was common, for example, for churches to have large choirs. One rather average parish I used to attend had, locked in a storage room, books and robes for a choir of fifty. The same church was overjoyed today to have a choir of ten. People would be at the church sewing cloths, or embroidering banners, or practicing music, or cleaning up. They also often took part in the decorations, or even the building of the church. Where today, the ordinary Catholic usually donates money to hire someone to build or repair or paint the church, back then the parishioners were far more involved in doing it themselves. Their church was in a very strong, almost literal sense, their church.

There was a whole other world of parish activity happening below the sanctuary, in the parish hall. Today, many of the parish halls are musty storage rooms, and haven't been used for their original purpose in decades. The halls, however, were once the home of a very active parish life. The space below the church was versatile and could be used for a myriad of purposes.

For example, as is the case today, it was used for banquets and gatherings of the various parish guilds and committees, or the Catholic Woman's League or the Knights of Columbus. It could be used for dances, or for coffee and tea after Mass. It could be used to serve meals to the homeless and starving, or blood donor drives. They were often used for sports and athletics, of which I will have more to say shortly. They were also the host of a whole series of nights of entertainment. Bridge clubs and euchre nights could be held in the hall. The almost legendary bingo nights were also put on down there. But whereas today's parish halls are very often a large open room, the old halls usually had one different feature: At one end of the room was a stage.

The presence of the stage changes the room considerably. Now the room could also be used for recitals, or public speaking, both by local members of the congregation, or by an outsider, or a touring company, Public meetings, and not merely parish meetings, could be carried out here. Drama groups could stage plays. The stages were often used by guest lecturers, who came to the parish to instruct and edify the people on a variety of topics. It wasn't just the local parishioners who performed and showed their talents. Touring actors and singers often dropped by for a performance. In the twentieth century, Monsignor Ronan and the St Michael's Boys' Choir regularly toured parishes around the diocese, raising money for both the boys' school and the host parish. Their performance was always a guaranteed sell out. People would come to be entertained and informed.

And there was still more going on at the parish. Very often the parish hosted several amateur sports teams, some of which were very nearly semi professional in their quality of play. The church yards were host of the lacrosse teams during the lacrosse craze of the late 19th century. (So great was the craze, for years the official national sport of Canada was Lacrosse) or baseballs teams. in the winter the yard was often flooded and turned into a place where they could play a newly invented game- hockey. In the days before broadcast sports, it was far more common for the sports fans to follow the neighbourhood amateur team. They had no other alternatives. The churches often formed leagues, and one parish would play another in fierce Christian competition. The priests were often the most fervent fans of the teams. Priests could often be heard addressing the team before a game, saying words along the lines of: "Now, I want you all to remember that it's not whether or not you win, but how you play the game. Now let's get out there and show the people from St X. how real Catholics play hockey!"

An old parishioner of one of my former parishes once told me of a long ago softball game at the parish. When it was her turn at bat, she smacked the ball with a mighty swing, and sent the ball much farther than anyone expected. So far, it sailed through one of the stained glass windows of her church. The priest, who was inside at the time, came rushing out of the church, holding the ball In his hand. "Who hit this?" he demanded. Trembling from head to foot, the girl raised her hand. "Oh, thank goodness," the priest said in relief. "I was afraid it was the other team." He tossed the ball back to the teams. "Good hit, dear," he said with a wink. "And don't worry about the window."

People participated in the many activities on many levels. People joined in the church activities out of piety, out of loyalty, to be with one's friends, or just to have something to do. The church actively recruited parishioners to join in the activities. The church actively recruited people to join their groups. They often targeted the young, to give them something to do and keep them out of trouble. In the sports, those who could, did. those who couldn't cheered them on, and frequently paid for the privilege. The church was not just a place of prayer, it was an integral part, the centre of lively, tightly knit communities. Parishioners could find themselves attending their church or a church sponsored event several times a week, often for reasons that had nothing to do with prayer,  The people who found themselves shut out from other aspects of society, closed in on themselves and their community home.

Over the course of the twentieth century, this picture slowly unraveled. I will begin to examine the question, what happened? There are many aspects to the answer, and the first aspect I will examine is a little conflict which started in 1914.

Next

Prologue to the Conclusion of the Brief History of the Diocese of Toronto

Previous

In August of 2003 the lights went out all over Eastern North America, including Toronto. As darkness fell, something strange happened in the city. Alarmists had predicted for years that such an even would cause panic, with widespread looting and rioting. Law and order would cease, and anarchy would reign. But that is not what happened. No, the strange thing was that people, often for the first time in years, came out of their houses and spoke to their neighbours.

In my case, this was the first time this had ever happened- neighbours speaking, that is. The neighbours gathered in the courtyard of our complex, and we began to talk. At first, we congregated around the few who had portable television sets and radios so we could catch the news. But all the news could tell us was that there was a blackout. So we abandoned the television sets and the radios. more people came down. Then some men dragged over their barbecues, then some more, then some more people came down with food, and then some more. "It'll only go rotten," they explained. "Eat up." One man brought out his freezer full of meat for his barbecue. "The only place my meat is going bad is right here!" he said, pointing to his belly, as he began to roast a series of steaks and hamburgers over the coals. "Now, how do you like your burger?" It was a veritable feast that night.

The night wore on, but we stayed out for much of it. Often we just gazed up at the impossibly starry sky of that night. We laughed and talked like old friends. A few people who had instruments brought them out and began to play music, and some people began to dance. What could easily have been a disaster had become a party.

Across the city, scenes like this were playing out in one neighbourhood after another. People laughed and joked, ate one another's food, strolled the streets in safety. The next night, the power was restored, and the people returned to their homes, and watched television, and surfed the net. Yet many people had fond memories of that blackout night, and it was seriously proposed that perhaps blackouts should become regularly scheduled events, at least once a year, to recapture that moment.

That night, for a few, brief hours, the people of Toronto got to experience something rare, for they got a brief glimpse of life in the past- the good part.  Understanding this will help to understand the Church in Toronto, and the changes it has undergone over the last century.

Next