Orangeism in Prince Edward Island

The Loyal Orange Association reached Prince Edward Island in 1849, just under twenty years after the founding of the Canadian Order at Brockville. The first lodge on the Island was chartered under the authority of the Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia and was formally confirmed by warrant from the Grand Lodge of British America in 1853. By the end of the 19th century the PEI jurisdiction had its own provincial grand lodge, a parliamentary act of incorporation for its senior lodge, and a cluster of about a dozen primary lodges scattered along the Island’s north- and south-shore settlement belts.

Boyne Lodge

Boyne Lodge was constituted at Charlottetown in 1849, meeting in the old Masonic hall above Reddin’s drugstore at Sunnyside. Its first Worshipful Master was a Mr. Blackwood, an artilleryman of the British contingent then garrisoned at the city’s Fort Edward. The chartering warrant originally came through the Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia. Warrant 614 was issued by the Grand Lodge of British America, dated 12 February 1853, regularising the Island lodge under the senior Canadian authority.

Boyne Lodge received its own Act of Incorporation from the Prince Edward Island Legislature in 1892. That statute is the earliest provincial-level legal recognition of an Orange body on the Island.

The 1859 Scarlet warrant

The first Scarlet warrant for a Royal Arch Purple degree body on the Island was granted on 24 July 1859. At that date the Association had four primary lodges on the Island.

Instituting the Grand Lodge of Prince Edward Island, 1862

At its Cobourg session of 9 August 1859, the Grand Lodge of British North America resolved that there would be separate local or provincial grand lodges under the general authority of the senior Grand Lodge, and specifically that the Island would constitute a distinct province under that arrangement. Under that resolution, Deputy Grand Master George P. Tanton summoned the Worshipful Masters of the Island’s primary lodges to Charlottetown. They convened in the Orange Hall on 24 February 1862 to institute the Provincial Grand Lodge of Prince Edward Island.

The founding meeting included the Worshipful Masters or representatives of Boyne Lodge (Dr. Thomas Leeming, acting Provincial Grand Secretary), Prince Edward Lodge (Nathaniel Acorn and Richard Smith), Rose Lodge (George Stanley), Lyone Lodge (David Ross), Trinity Lodge (Dr. D. Kaye), Barton Lodge (John Robertson), Tanton Lodge (Thomas Carson), Calvin Lodge (Thomas Bigger), and Dalmeney Lodge (Roderick McNeil), together with visitors from other lodges.

The authorising warrant itself carried the date of 26 July 1861, issued under the seal of the senior Canadian office — the Grand Master of British North America acting for the LOABA. Its terms gave the new Island Grand Lodge the right to elect officers, raise dues, subdivide the Island into counties and districts, and pass its own rules — subject always to the constitution of the senior grand lodge.

Context

The 1830s and 1840s saw the largest cohort of Irish Protestant emigration to the Maritime provinces since Loyalist times. The shore settlements of the Island — notably Wood Islands, Murray Harbour, and the Cornwall-Charlottetown belt — took in Ulster settlers whose existing Orange affiliations carried straight across. The 1849 chartering of Boyne Lodge gave those settlers an institutional home, and the 1862 provincial grand lodge put the Island’s Orangeism on the same organisational footing as the mainland Canadian jurisdictions. Wood Islands and the south shore remained one of the heavier concentrations of rural PEI lodges into the early 20th century.

Decline and the present

The Island’s Orange membership declined through the 20th century along the same curve as mainland Canadian jurisdictions, and for the same combination of reasons: the post-1920 slowdown in Ulster emigration, mid-century secularisation of Maritime Protestantism, and the disappearance of sectarian politics from Island public life. A small number of PEI lodges continue to meet. The Public Archives of the Island holds the minute books, warrants, and officers’ correspondence of the jurisdiction going back to 1849.