There was a strong hatred of Catholics in parts of Canada like Toronto which was a very Orange city. Being Catholic was a bar to getting elected municipaly & getting jobs. My dad came to Canada in the '50s & said there were signs in Toronto "Catholics need not apply" when he was looking for work.
My grandmother’s family were Orangemen & when a Catholic boy got her pregnant she wasn’t allowed to marry him.
Ahhh the Irish. Catholics weren’t even considered white for a while
It started w/the Irish Catholics which is why we have a separate school system, but then later other predominantly Catholic people like Italians, Portuguese etc came along & were also hated. They were also considered non white.
🎯 Last names ending in vowels trouble them.
Victor Copps (the "Copps Coliseum" guy, father of Sheila) was the city of Hamilton's first Catholic mayor...in 1962. One of his first official acts was to cancel the city's annual Orange Order Parade.
If you think Irish Catholics were treated badly here, wait’ll you hear how their British colonialists treated them.
Ha! I’ve been reading up lately. The Brits have been murdering the Irish for centuries
Did you read the non-fiction book, ROT? It’s riveting; about the potato famines from the POV of genocidal British policy. After I read it, I understood why there’ such a visceral anger & opposition to the forced Gaza famine in 🇮🇪. My gran came to 🇺🇸 in 1917 & they were still feeling the effects.
May have mentioned in past- one of the best non-fiction books I have read was Insurgent Empire Anti-colonial resistance and British Dissent that undoes notion that British empire brought notion of freedom and liberty when it was actually birthed of the fight of those colonized
I've been listening to historical YouTube videos while doing my brain-off work and it's been crazy. I feel a little less crazy about modern times because this timeline has been fucked for ages. We just didn't know or forgot or chose to forget.
Interesting- history gives me a similar feeling of both despair & comfort. It shows you that human nature never changes, & we’ve all been cutting off our noses to spite our faces for millennia. Make society matriarchal & you’ll have a sea change.
I strongly suggest "Galway Bay" by Mary Pat Kelly.
Catholics could not practice their faith until 1830.
I was typing my reply out before I read this, haha! Henry VIII had a case of misogyny of historic proportions.
I'm from southern Ontario. Definitely remember some low key weirdness about Catholics. My aunt gave her firstborn an Irish name. I think she'd confused Welsh with Irish. My Welsh/English Protestant grandfather was like "Why on earth did she choose a Fenian name?" So...yeah.
I had a coworker in the '90s always talk about WASPs like us. I never corrected him, I'm Catholic. When he found out I was Catholic, he stopped talking to me. I was shocked. We were both in our 20's. I had never experienced that before or since. He was, or I thought, a smart, educated guy.
I was born and raised Catholic and if I could teach people one thing about Catholics as a whole, it's that we are not one flavor of people in a religion. I've met Catholics with very "radical" views that are more Biblically defensible than most conservative interpretations.
That could apply to any group of people. We aren't defined by one thing.
Exactly!
I will say, though, in general there's an attitude in Canada that it's not polite to discuss religion. Unlike US politics, we dont really want to know our politicians' religious faith. We also don't really care about their spouses & children.
Canada's right-wing politicians are not as transparent as the US right-wingers, that's for sure. Here, they have always worked to marry church and government but the church is just called "morality." I know Canada has some "moral" politicians like we do but not the evangelical angle.
And any time they do reveal themselves, mainstream voters are put off. So they're very, very careful about it. I noticed Mark Carney kept his family very much out of view during his campaign. As usual. Unlike Poilievre, whose wife had her own ads. A lot of voters found that extremely weird
I live in Brampton and our mayor, Patrick Brown uses his wife & kids as props. He sends out a newsletter & the majority of the photos include his kids. No one else does that. It is so off-putting. I recall 1 of the women who accused him said he told her he needed a family for his political image.
May I ask your reason for this post?
I wonder how much of this is just the good old Catholics versus Protestants issue that got brought over from England and got disguised as hate for Catholics in general instead of for the Irish specifically?