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Keystone Cops, Steve Correia (left) and Jonathan Lamb ride along the route and stop to meet with parade watchers during Toronto’s 31st Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2018.
The following caption appeared on a 1988 photo of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: “Parade watchers: The revellers were all smiles as they enjoyed Toronto’s first St. Patrick’sDayParade since 1878. It was estimated that more than 25,000 people turned out yesterday for the festivities, which included marching bands, floats and a huge cake celebrating the city of Dublin’s 1,000th birthday. Organizers hope the parade becomes an annual event.”
The Cambridge Dictionary says the term urban myth is “a story or statement that isn’t true, but is often repeated, and believed by many to be true.”
That’s a useful way of describing erroneous reports that have been published in the Toronto Star and elsewhere for several decades about how St. Patrick’s Day was “banned” by our city.
St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of the patron saint of Ireland and all things Irish. It’s a joyous day with parades, where folks dress up in green outfits, typically adorned with shamrocks. Alcohol — green beer for many — usually flows and hugs typically abound.
Aside from positive stories about merriment on the streets, the Star ran a freelance opinion feature last month for St. Patrick’s Day on why our city “banned” the St. Patrick’s Day parade for over 100 years.
The article stated the city banned the parade in 1878 due to violence between Catholics and Protestants.
A short time after the article ran, my office received an email from a third party stating that according to Mark McGowan, professor of history and Celtic studies at St. Michael’s College at U of T and a leading historian of this city’s Irish community, the parade was never banned.
So, with assistance from Astrid Lange and Rick Sznajder, experienced researchers from the Star’s library, I looked into this mystery.
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A number of stories in our archives dating back decades refer to a St. Patrick’s Day parade “ban.”
The following caption appeared on a 1988 photo of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: “Parade watchers: The revellers were all smiles as they enjoyed Toronto’s first St. Patrick’sDayParade since 1878. It was estimated that more than 25,000 people turned out yesterday for the festivities, which included marching bands, floats and a huge cake celebrating the city of Dublin’s 1,000th birthday. Organizers hope the parade becomes an annual event.”
Andrew Stawicki Toronto Star
For example, a Star article from 1988, the first St. Patrick’s parade in Toronto in decades, states: “In fact, the police had a hand in the last St. Patrick’s Day parade in Toronto — back in 1878. That year, it turned into a riot and the parade was banned — by the bishop of Toronto, it’s thought. The ban stuck.”
But our recent research failed to reveal any indication that the parade was “banned” by the city or religious heads for 100 years. In fact, we didn’t come across any instances of an official ban ever being in place.
For example, it doesn’t appear there was a ban in effect in 1879 — the year after violence broke out at the parade.
A March 5, 1879 story in the Globe and Mail said that during a meeting of the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union No. 1, a resolution was adopted stating: “feeling convinced that the majority of the Irishmen of this city are not desirous of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day by a public procession, therefore this society declines taking part in a parade on the 17th …”
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According to a report in the Evening Star (the former name of the Toronto Star) a parade was held in 1895, put on by the Catholic societies of Toronto and beginning at St. Lawrence Hall.
A 1927 Star story shed a bit of light on why the parades were for the most part halted. “It was owing to the disorders which accompanied the celebrations, that the Catholic societies decided to abandon the annual procession in 1878. Since that year, no official parade of the combined societies has been held in Toronto on St. Patrick’s Day.
So, no “ban” but rather a general desire not to put on a parade.
The “disorders” relates to conflicts between Protestants — Irish, but also Scottish and English, vs. Irish Catholics.
Those tensions played out, in riots in 1875 and in 1878, the latter year seeing shots fired at rioters by police. The 1878 tensions ran so high that, according to one report in the Star from 1927, to avoid his arrival being noticed in the city, a leader from Ireland invited to speak here, O’Donovan Rossa, had to jump from a moving train at the foot of Spadina Ave. He hit his head in the slush.
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Aside from shots fired in 1878, there was also significant property damage resulting in a “general desire to have an end put to that sort of thing,” the Star story said.
“The Irish community lost interest in mounting the parade for many reasons,” McGowan, the U of T expert on history and Celtic studies told me in an interview.
Keystone Cops, Steve Correia (left) and Jonathan Lamb ride along the route and stop to meet with parade watchers during Toronto’s 31st Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2018.
Star Staff Toronto Star
During this time, church leaders in the Irish community also encouraged members to attend other activities to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day — going to mass, dinners, concerts, etc. McGowan added.
So, it wasn’t a ban on the parade, but rather “agency within the Irish community … Catholic organizations not doing it. You had clergy and lay leaders saying: ‘is this worth it?’ ‘’ McGowan said, adding there were also safety concerns.
But McGowan added that the “resurrection” of the parade in Toronto in 1988 was a “victory for the Irish community.”
As for the Star and our erroneous stories over the years about a parade ban, we’ll go back and add correction notes to our archives and online. At least we can count ourselves lucky that a sharp-eyed reader helped us put an end to this long-standing urban myth.
