The Ritual of the Streets in Mid-19th-Century Toronto

Abstract

The central streets of mid-19th-century Toronto, the principal public open spaces of the city, were the preferred place for enacting a wide variety of demonstrations which ranged from well-organized official processions to informal and even violent crowd scenes, Their use for these rituals of collective behaviour followed a tradition, still honoured at mid-century, of almost unhindered public accessibility to the streets. The claims which groups asserted for the use and enjoyment of this symbolic space, and the responses of the inhabitants and city government to the exercise of these rights, reveal the process by which the community adjudicated social conflict and built consensus through the manipulation and control of a valuable collective asset: the streets.