Toronto Mayors by Year, 1834 to 1972, and the Orange Order

Fifty-five men held the mayoralty of Toronto between 1834 and 1972, and the tables below give each year’s mayor. Eight are documented as Orangemen, by reference works or, for Leslie Saunders, his own memoir. An earlier website’s page names sixteen more. For the other thirty-one, the record is silent, mixed or points the other way.

The claim is old, and it travels. Toronto was the Belfast of Canada, the story runs, a nickname that became the title of William Smyth’s 2015 book, and its mayors came out of the lodge. Some did. Edward Frederick Clarke, a printer who edited the Orange Sentinel, became Deputy Grand Master of the Order in British America and was mayor from 1888 to 1891. Others did not, and for most of them the record says nothing at all. In 1854 the mayor was Joshua George Beard. In 1897 Robert John Fleming resigned in August to become assessment commissioner and John Shaw took the chair. The tables give every other year.

How many Toronto mayors were Orangemen?

Wikipedia’s article on the Order in Canada says that over the rest of the nineteenth century, after 1844, twenty of twenty-three mayors would be Orangemen, and that every mayor in the first half of the twentieth century was one. Its article on Nathan Phillips goes further and says every mayor since Thomas David Morrison’s appointment in 1836 had belonged to the Order. This site’s pages on the Order in Canada and Orangemen’s Day once repeated figures of the same kind.

Neither Wikipedia article gives a list of names. A count without a list cannot be checked, so the tables below build the list. The City of Toronto’s chronological list supplies the 55 men and their years. It also suggests where “twenty of twenty-three” comes from: twenty-three men held the office between 1845 and 1899, counting George Gurnett’s second term. Of those twenty-three, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Landmarks of Toronto and the 1898 and 1907 biographical dictionaries document four as Orangemen (Boulton, Medcalf, Clarke and Shaw), and the earlier site’s page adds three (Harman, Beaty and Kennedy). Gurnett had Orange ties in the 1830s and broke with them by 1844. That is seven, or eight with Gurnett, and nowhere near twenty.

For 1901 to 1950, nineteen men first took the chair. Three are documented (Coatsworth, Geary and Hocken), eight more appear only on the earlier site’s page, one was photographed in an Orange parade, one is recorded in Landmarks as not a member of the Association, and six have no source either way. That measures paper, not lodges: a mayor missing here may well have signed the roll. What the tables can show is how much of the famous count survives contact with a source.

What counts as documented?

Four kinds of evidence sit behind the label. The DCB is scholarly and names membership outright for William Henry Boulton and Francis Henry Medcalf. Robertson’s Landmarks of Toronto, volume 6 (1914), records Orange membership or office for Medcalf, Coatsworth, Geary and Hocken. The Canadian Men and Women of the Time (1898) and the Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of York (1907) place Clarke and Shaw in the Order. Leslie Saunders, mayor in 1954, titled his own memoir An Orangeman in Public Life (Britannia Printers, 1970). Those eight are labelled Documented.

The next source is a 2016 capture of the earlier Canadian Orange Historical Site, which carried a page of Toronto mayoral profiles. It places sixteen more mayors in the Order, twelve of them with a lodge number, none of whom the sources above place there. The current site is not an organ of the Order, and nothing on that page says who wrote it, so its lodge numbers are treated as claims. It also does not always match what it paraphrases. Its profile of Samuel Bickerton Harman calls him an Orangeman, then paraphrases the DCB entry on his Masonic career, and that DCB entry never mentions the Order. Those sixteen are labelled “Earlier site’s page only”.

“Not documented” means the DCB, Landmarks, the two biographical dictionaries and the earlier site’s page are silent on a man’s membership. It does not mean non-member. Two men are labelled “Outside the Order”: Thomas Urquhart, whom Landmarks records as not a member of the Association, and Nathan Phillips.

Who was mayor of Toronto from 1834 to 1863?

Adam Wilson, in 1859, was the first mayor elected by the people, according to Landmarks of Toronto, which says an Act of Parliament in 1858 changed how the mayor was chosen. Two mayors held the office in 1858, and the table lists both.

Of the fifteen men here, only Boulton is documented. The earlier site’s page puts George Monro and Henry Sherwood in the ranks in 1841, but the DCB, which describes Orangemen disrupting the Reform parade that March and Orange backing for Sherwood’s campaigns, never says either man belonged. Gurnett’s DCB entry is the most useful of the group: it shows a mayor who helped the Order’s leader and later tried to stop the Order’s parade.

Who was mayor of Toronto from 1864 to 1913?

Medcalf won the chair for 1864 on the separate school fight. The DCB says a coalition of Liberals, Orangemen and Tories brought him forward against the incumbent, John George Bowes. Council picked the mayor again from 1867 under an Act of 1866, and Medcalf returned only when election by the people was restored in 1874. His own page is here.

The documented mayors cluster after 1886. Clarke held the chair for four years, and Shaw was mayor when the new City Hall opened in 1899. Landmarks of Toronto also records that Fleming, mayor in 1892 and 1893 and again from 1896, became manager of the Toronto Railway Company in 1905. On the Twelfth of 1907 he insisted the streetcars keep running through the parade. Crowds tried to stop them, and County Master Joseph Thompson appealed to the young men in the procession and was not heeded. Emerson Coatsworth, mayor in 1906 and 1907, is documented too: Landmarks calls him an Orangeman who had angered the Order over the Remedial Bill in 1896, and the earlier site’s biography, recovered on this site, gives his lodge as L.O.L. 781. Thomas Urquhart, mayor from 1903 to 1905, is the instructive exception: on the Twelfth of 1904 he was called to the platform “though not a member of the Association,” as Landmarks puts it.

In 1910 George Reginald Geary won the chair and Horatio Hocken lost his bid for it, and Landmarks documents both as Orangemen. Hocken had bought the Orange Sentinel in 1905 and was Deputy Grand Treasurer of the Grand Orange Lodge of British North America. Geary resigned the mayoralty on 21 October 1912 to become corporation counsel, and council chose Hocken the same day to finish the term. Hocken’s biography covers the Grand Lodge office he took afterward, and the DCB entry for him is marked not yet available.

Who was mayor of Toronto from 1914 to 1972?

Thomas Langton Church held the office for seven years, 1915 to 1921, longer than anyone before him in the table. The earlier site’s page names his lodge, Royal Canadian L.O.L. 212, and the DCB, Landmarks and the biographical dictionaries do not mention him in the Order.

The twentieth century is where the sweeping claims are boldest and the documentation thinnest. Eight of the nineteen men who first took office between 1901 and 1950 appear only on the earlier site’s page. The 1927 photograph of Mayor Foster in the Twelfth parade is real, and a mayor riding in a parade does not prove a lodge card. Leslie Saunders, mayor in 1954, is the clearest case of a mayor in public Orange life: the earlier site’s page gives his initiation into L.O.L. 876 in 1918, and his memoir is titled An Orangeman in Public Life. Wikipedia’s article on Saunders calls Nathan Phillips, in office from 1955, the first non-Orangeman in the twentieth century to be mayor of Toronto, and the first Jewish mayor, though Landmarks records Urquhart, mayor from 1903 to 1905, as not a member. Wikipedia’s article on the Order names William Dennison, mayor from 1967 to 1972, as the last Orangeman to hold the office, and the earlier site’s page gives his lodge as Enniskillen L.O.L. 387.

The evidence, mayor by mayor

Every man with a label other than “Not documented” appears here with the specific lines behind it. “The DCB” means the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, “Landmarks” means Robertson’s Landmarks of Toronto, and “the earlier site’s page” means the 2016 capture of the earlier Canadian Orange Historical Site’s page of Toronto mayoral profiles.

The twenty-seven men with no entry above are Mackenzie, Sullivan, Thomas David Morrison, Powell, Bowes, Beard, Allan, John Beverley Robinson, Hutchison, Read, Wilson, James Edward Smith, Sheard, Manning, Angus Morrison, McMurrich, Boswell, William Holmes Howland, Fleming, Macdonald, Oliver Aikin Howland, Wemp, Day, Conboy, Robert Hood Saunders, McCallum and Givens. The earlier site’s page profiles Beard, Hutchison, Read, Smith, Sheard, Angus Morrison, McMurrich, Boswell, William Holmes Howland, Oliver Aikin Howland, Wemp, Day and McCallum without naming a lodge. It has no profile of Mackenzie, Sullivan, Thomas David Morrison, Powell, Bowes, Allan, Robinson, Wilson, Manning, Fleming, Macdonald, Conboy, Robert Hood Saunders or Givens. The DCB records Orange gangs attacking Mackenzie and calls Sullivan a target of the Order. For the structure of the Order that produced these lodges, see the Order in Ontario.