Community Life

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, observers frequently noted that the English seemed more reticent than other groups to form national societies. Though one Canadian attributed this tendency to English patriotism being “not always so ebullient as the Scotch and Irish variety, by reason that ‘it boiled at a higher point,’” an overseas visitor traced it instead to the fact that patriotic feeling was not taught in English schools. Youth organizations founded in England and exported to Canada, such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, certainly promoted patriotism but in a British imperialist rather than a narrowly English sense. There were nonetheless some organizations that sought to bring together a mostly English clientele.

St George’s societies were organized in various cities of British North America, many of them no doubt arising, as the Toronto society did in 1834, from a hotel dinner to celebrate St George’s Day (23 April). These were charitable and fraternal societies with a membership composed of society and business leaders. The earliest was organized in Halifax in 1786 for “unanimity and good fellowship” and to provide charity with preference to natives of England or their widows and children. Patriotic purposes were strictly secondary. Such societies were established in Saint John in 1802, Toronto and Montreal in 1834, Quebec in 1836, Ottawa in 1844, London in 1867, Barrie in 1875, and Hamilton and Trenton. The Montreal organization did not have a strictly English membership and most of the others admitted the Welsh, who were normally too weak numerically to organize their own societies. The membership collectively in 1908 cannot have exceeded 4,000. In 1877 a Union of St George’s Societies of North America was formed in Philadelphia and held its conventions in Canada on several occasions, the last meeting seemingly in Hamilton in 1899. Thereafter the central body collapsed but, beginning in 1911, the Halifax group organized conferences of the Canadian societies.

Far more prominent numerically was the Sons of England Benevolent Society (SOE), established in Toronto in 1874. The founder was a Nottingham emigrant, G.B. Brooks, who, upon observing the Christmas distribution of food by the Toronto St George’s Society, was pained by “the haughtiness with which the goods were given in several cases” and by the fact that Englishmen were the only people of all the nationalities in Toronto who had to “parade their wants and sufferings to the gaze of others and be made the recipients of charity in a public manner.” Brooks began Court Albion No.1 of the SOE on 12 December 1874 with seven emigrants from Middlesex, five of them unemployed. The SOE was founded, like many national societies of the era, on the idea that Englishmen should not have to solicit charity but rather be able to subscribe to a mutual insurance fund to provide sick and death benefits. Members were also encouraged to offer one another employment and support each other in business and trade. The organization held social functions and adopted quasi-Masonic rituals and initiation ceremonies.

Within two years there were lodges in Middlesex, Kent, and Essex counties and thereafter the SOE spread rapidly through Ontario and into Quebec. A lodge was founded in Winnipeg, and the first in the Maritimes was established in 1891 after a Charlottetown visitor picked up a copy of the organization’s unofficial organ, the Anglo-Saxon (Ottawa, 1887–1900) in Quebec City. After the turn of the century, the SOE formed reception committees for new arrivals and sponsored social evenings with music-hall entertainment, patriotic songs, and English ale; in British Columbia it arranged seaside excursions. Its leaders were members of the elite; in Montreal, workers joined the SOE because it was a good way to get to know the foremen who could nominate men for employment. The Welsh were initially excluded because several of the founding members had a low opinion of Welshmen, but by the 1890s the SOE was open to them and to Manxmen and Channel Islanders as well. It never admitted Roman Catholics, arguing that they put priests before country and that any Catholic of good character would prefer to join a Catholic organization.

English national organizations expanded their memberships greatly in the years leading up to World War I, owing both to the massive English influx and to the imperialist fervour of the Edwardian era. The Sons of England gave birth to an independent but flourishing network of similar organizations in South Africa and by 1908 had over 300 lodges in Canada and Newfoundland and a membership of 25,000, adding over 5,000 to the rolls in 1907 alone. Some associations and individuals affiliated voluntarily with the Royal Society of St George (RSSG). This was a society founded in London, England, in 1894 to revive the celebration of St George’s Day, disseminate patriotic literature to the young, and encourage patriotism among the English-born and those of English origin throughout the Empire. The first society to affiliate with the English group was founded spontaneously at a meeting of 400 immigrants at Prince Albert (Saskatchewan). Their intent was to raise money for those in need during the winter, organize a free labour bureau, and work with a militia company of young Englishmen to build a gymnasium. A St George’s society formed in Fredericton in 1909 was the fourteenth such society in Canada, three of which were affiliated with the RSSG.

An independent women’s organization, the Daughters of England (DOE), was established in Hamilton in 1890 and expanded across the country once it began offering sick benefits in 1895. By 1952 there were 117 lodges from Victoria to Halifax. Both the SOE and the DOE operated juvenile lodges for children aged five to sixteen in association with many of the local adult societies. The overseas RSSG admitted both men and women. The more exclusive St George’s societies tended to be men’s organizations, though concerts and balls sometimes replaced dinners so that women could attend and “ladies’ auxiliaries” were occasionally formed for fundraising purposes. Women were admitted to the annual Halifax banquet only in 1939 and the Toronto association began designating four meetings a year as “ladies’ nights” in 1953. A later successful challenge to the males-only policy by a group of Toronto women cost that organization members who claimed their wives disapproved of them socializing with other women.

The SOE was smaller and much less politically influential than the Orange Order, which had long before outgrown its Protestant Irish roots and in 1906 claimed 1,725 primary lodges and a Canadian membership of 100,000. In centres such as London, Ontario, most of the urban members of the Orange lodges were English factory workers, too humble perhaps to join even the SOE, let alone the more elite St George’s Society. Like the Orange Lodge, both the SOE and the St George’s societies were characterized by fervent pro-British patriotism. The SOE’s constitution declared that “as a political institution it was to know no party” apart from loyalty to the crown, and the St George’s Society of Toronto in 1855 had banned political or religious subjects from its meetings. Much of these organizations’ patriotic activity amounted to annual church services and St George’s Day dinners of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, encouraging the flying of the flag on 23 April and discouraging its use in commercial displays, and fund-raising “At Homes” with English music and occasionally a maypole dance. Nonetheless, many were unable to ignore the day’s political controversies. In a 1908 dinner speech to the Ottawa St George’s Society, Minister of Militia and Defence Frederick Borden advocated a strong land force so Canada could assist the mother country; and man of letters J. Castell Hopkins spoke at a meeting of the Trenton society in favour of Canada assuming her “moral obligations” to share in the upkeep of the Empire. Though the RSSG claimed to “know neither creed nor party,” it advocated imperial free trade and denounced the Labour Party as “a greater danger to our country than any foreign foe.” It praised the St George’s Society of Saint John for resolving to cooperate with its Ottawa counterpart in opposing Asiatic labour, concluding that “we must and will have a white Canada as well as a white Australia.” The SOE also opposed Asian immigration, the use of flags other than the Union Jack, and the singing of “odes like ‘O Canada’ instead of the national anthem.”

The Independent Order of Oddfellows was directly transferred from Britain and its members were mostly British immigrants; by 1913 there were 7,000 in British Columbia alone. There were also English county societies in larger centres, and by 1905 British Columbia boasted a provincial association of Yorkshire societies. Later, some immigrants were attracted to more ethnically eclectic and more educationally motivated groups such as the Empire Club, the Royal Commonwealth Society, and the English Speaking Union.

In the post–World War II period, the older, more exclusively English organizations declined or disappeared. The Toronto St George’s Society sold its building to a tenant with a more heterogeneous membership, the Arts and Letters Club, and in 1967 ceased printing its annual reports. The SOE and DOE flourished through the Depression years, when their sick benefits, small as they were, were of incalculable benefit to many families. The SOE proved unable to attract members beyond the first generation and declined with falling English immigration in the post-war era. It disbanded in 1971 after its benefit functions were taken over by provincial medical insurance. Many of the local SOE lodges were still active at that time, but the membership was elderly and opening the organization to Protestants of British Isles descent made little difference. One lodge of the DOE, Queen Victoria of Canada lodge, still exists in the Toronto area; the rest closed as the membership aged. In more recent decades, English immigrants have sometimes belonged to local clubs which are not specifically English, such as the United Kingdom Club of Cambridge (Ontario) or the Great Britain Social Club of Guelph. Such circles operate as oases in which immigrants can share common interests and experiences. Immigrants’ soccer clubs in Ottawa in the 1990s tend to draw their memberships randomly from among English, Irish, and Scots.

Though ethnic organizations, like most service clubs, are now less popular than formerly, recent years have seen some new publications catering to English immigrants. Monarchist magazines, such as the Monarchist League of Canada’s quarterly Monarchy Canada (Toronto, 1970– ) or the newsstand periodical Majesty, appeal to a specific political or romantic fringe that is by no means mostly immigrant. The glossy periodical Britannia (Hillier, Ontario, 1982– ) is essentially English in content, though its motto is “Keeping in Touch with the British Way of Life.” It contains digests of British news, reminiscences from subscribers, and nostalgic, regional, and historical articles. Its English recipes include some, like Mulligatawny soup, that have come to Britain from other parts of the old Empire.