, at the 17th Biennial Ulster-American .
'The Orange Order in Canada', edited by David Wilson, an Associate Professor and lecturer at the Institute, and a familiar face to the Ulster Scots fraternity in Londonderry, was welcomed to the Symposium by Professor John Wilson, Director of the Institute of Ulster-Scots Studies at Magee.
Introducing his book, the editor paid tribute to all those involved in the publication, adding: "The subject is extremely important in that the Irish in Canada are quite different from the Irish in the United States in that most of them came before the Famine and in that two thirds of them were Protestant and the most important institutional contribution to Canada, that Ireland gave to Canada was the Orange Order.
"In 1921 when Orangeism was at it's peak, there were more Orangemen in British North America than there were in Ireland. One in three adult Protestant males was a member of the Orange Order and the most Orange place on the planet in terms of the proportion of the Orangemen to the Protestant population was Newfoundland, and there were virtually no Irish Protestants in Newfoundland - which tells us about the Orange Order in Canada. Unlike many other ethnic-based institutions, this one spilled over from it's ethnic origins and began to embrace many other people," he said.
Among those to join were English, Welsh and Scottish Protestants, as well as American Loyalist Protestants.
"It was a remarkable achievement, and some of the things we look at in the book include situating Canadian Orangeism in it's global context, looking at Orangeism in its friendly society - its Benefit Society connotations, looking at Orange ideology, and also in my own case, looking at Orangeism and politics in mid-19th Century Canada," he said.
HIghlighting how politically there was accommodation and conflict on the ground, he continues: "If I take Toronto as an example, in 1920 there were roughly 10,000 Orangemen on parade. It was the big parade of the year and there were 20,000 onlookers. This was in a city with a population of a quarter of a million.
"Today Toronto has a population of about five million, but the 2005 parade in Toronto had 180-something people. I counted them. In 2006 they had a few more because the tri-annual conference was there, so there were 220. The bemused spectators in multi-cultural, secular, modern Toronto, looking at these marchers, with one person staring intently at them for five - well three minutes as they passed by, turned to me and said 'Who are these people?'
"In a sense that is what the book is trying to answer. It is trying to give a rounded portrait of Orangeism that gets away from stereotypes about the Orange Order," he said, paying tribute to its many contributors.
Contributors Willie Jenkins and seminal author, |William J Smith, who together with Cecil J Houston, who wrote 'The Sash Canada War', also spoke at the launch, and congratulated Mr Wilson and the Institute on the new publication.