The De-Greening of the Irish : Toronto’s Irish‑Catholic Press, Imperialism, and the Forging of a New Identity, 1887-1914

Abstract

Traditionally Canadian and American historians have assumed thai Irish Catholics in urban centres constituted highly resistant subcultures in the face of a dominantProtestant majority. In Canada, scholars have stated that these Irish-Catholic subcultures kept themselves isolated, socially and religiously, from the Anglo- Protestant society around them. Between 1890 and 1918, however, the Irish Catholics of Toronto underwent significant social, ideological, and economic changes that hastened their integration into Toronto society. By World War One, Irish Catholics were dispersed in all of Toronto's neighbourhoods; they permeated the city's occupational structure at all levels; and they intermarried with Protestants at an unprecedented rate. These changes were greatly influenced by Canadian-born generations of Irish-Catholic clergy and laity. This paper argues that these social, ideological, and emotional realignments were confirmed and articulated most clearly in the city's Catholic press. Editors drew up new lines of loyally for Catholics and embraced the notion of an autonomous Canadian nation within the British Empire. What developed was a sense of English-speaking Catholic Canadian identity which included a love of the British Crown, allegiance to the Empire, and a duty to participate in Canadian nation-building. In the process, a sense of Irish identity declined as new generations of Catholics chose to contextualize their Catholicism in a Canadian cultural milieu. The press expressed a variant of the imperial-nationalist theme, which blended devout Catholicism with a theory of imperial “interdependence.” This maturation of a new identity facilitated Catholic participation in the First World War and underscored an English-speaking Catholic effort to evangelize and anglicize “new” Catholic Canadians. By the end of the war, Toronto's Irish Catholics were imbued with zealous Canadian patriotism, complemented, in part, by their greater social integration into the city's mainstream.