The 12th rekindles memories of a violent past

On the 12th of July, my mother travelled to Glasgow. I was not happy. There are nicer days to go to Glasgow. Last year I went to Glasgow on the 12th of July to meet my father at the airport, and the bus was full of tipsy men going to their Orange Day festivities. Orange marches snaked down the streets. There were Glasgow Rangers emblems everywhere, reminders of the sectarian soccer violence that until recently plagued the city.

“Now you boys behave,” said a woman on the bus to a middle-aged skinhead.

“Hello, hello!” the skinhead chortled, quoting the sectarian ditty, “The Billy Boys.”

To stem sectarian violence at Glasgow soccer games, officials banned singing of “The Billy Boys.” The only place I have heard it sung is Toronto, during Toronto’s Orange Day parade.

The Toronto Twelfth is North America’s oldest consecutive annual parade; the Orange Order has been in Canada since 1830. A historically anti-Catholic organization, it once wielded enormous influence in Ontario. My grandparents considered themselves Orangemen, which may be why they so strongly opposed my mother’s conversion to Catholicism. And because the Toronto Twelfth so often led to violent clashes — with Catholic teenagers throwing rocks at “King Billy” as he rode his white horse — it was with some trepidation that I went downtown that day.

Nevertheless, I expected the parade to be tired and worn, like a village museum exhibit. But the first sight that caught my eye when I neared Moss Park Armoury was a tiny child in an orange t-shirt. This was very much a multi-generational event. Elderly women sat on folding chairs in front of the armoury with their grandchildren. And there was another surprise: all the modern British stuff. A middle-aged woman carried a huge Rangers Football Club banner. What, I wondered, did a Glasgow soccer team have to do with Old Ontario?  

The parade began with a clatter of drums. There were cheers. Policemen on bicycles led the way. Behind them marched cohorts of drummers, flautists, pipers and marching Orangemen, separated by big orange banners with ancient designs. The banners looked surprisingly new, and most of the musicians were young. Several of the exclusively male orange-sashed marchers were young. All but three marchers were white.

The parade began with the Union Jack, the Maple Leaf and an Orange flag. But outnumbering them was a flag I had never seen before: the Red Hand of Ulster. What, I wondered, did Ulster have to do with Old Ontario?

“Hello, hello,” sang the men. “We are the Billy Boys.”

There was no horse. “King Billy” was about nine years old, and tiny “Queen Mary” beside him clutched a handful of Twelfth of July lilies. Tourists looked delighted and took photographs. Shopkeepers and Torontonians trying to go places looked confused. Marshalls shouted angrily at passersby who dared to cut through the parade to cross the street. In Glasgow, as in Belfast, this is a serious no-no. But why should Torontonians know that?

I was surprised at how big the parade was, having expected only 40 marchers or so. A hundred years ago there would have been thousands filling the streets and sidewalks, of course. But I had thought that Orange parades in today’s Ontario were just a hobby of a few elderly men.   

Nevertheless, I concluded that this parade no longer had anything to do with sectarianism. Toronto is a city of a hundred ethnicities: this was just another ethnic parade. My mother’s ethnic, come to think of it. Had Mum not converted to Catholicism, I could have been draped in orange and playing a flute myself. Who knows?

But then, just as I was having these tolerant thoughts, the marchers turned left onto Shuter Street to march past St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.     

A little knot of Catholics stood in the south gate. I joined them. A blue-uniformed security guard beamed at me.

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I didn’t think they’d march past the cathedral.”

“Well, they have to,” said the security guard. “It’s part of their thing. Ah, well, you have to have a sense of humour.”

We were joined by another woman who looked at the marchers and sighed. “My dad was one once,” she said. She had a devotional manual in her hand; Mass was to begin soon. The woman and the security guard swapped stories of violent Orange Days past.

The police car followed the Orangemen down Shuter Street, and the music and drumming faded into the distance. I went into the cathedral and sat at the very back. The congregation was very multi-racial, very multicultural. The priest spoke in a mellifluous South Asian accent; the server was African. There were Filipina ladies all around. This was not my grandparents’ Ontario, not Glasgow Redux, not Ulster Lite. Thank God for that.