St. Patrick's Day Parades in Nineteenth-Century Toronto:

Abstract

This study traces the evolution of St. Patrick's Day parades in nineteenth-century Toronto. Conflict between different elements both for control of the parade and over the form which it should assume suggests a struggle for control of the Irish Catholic immigrant community and a tension between strategies of protest and accommodation as appropriate responses to the host society. These tensions had been largely resolved by the 1870s and the abandonment of the parades may be seen as a crucial indice of Irish Catholic assimilation.