The Harbour Grace Affray: 1880s Boxing Day riot that changed Newfoundland politics

During Christmas in 1883, a Boxing Day confrontation between Protestants and Catholics in Harbour Grace led to a riot. Five men died, and it started a public outcry that reshaped politics in the colony.

Around noon on December 26, between four and five hundred Protestant members of the Loyal Orange Association set out after church for a parade around the community. Dressed in orange sashes and waving a Union Jack, the men filed down Harvey Street, one of Harbour Grace’s main thoroughfares, to the beat of a marching band.

Orangemen were conservative Protestants, loyal to the British Crown and opposed to Catholicism and Catholic political authority. When they neared the head of the harbour, they were met by over a hundred Catholic men intent on preventing the parade from passing through Riverhead, a Catholic enclave.

The Catholics told the Orangemen to turn around, the Orangemen refused, and the two camps were at a standstill until the parade suddenly surged forward and a brawl broke out.

Shots were fired on both sides: some by Catholic men who had brought rifles with them and some by Protestant sympathizers who had turned up to support the unarmed Orangemen.

Three men, two Protestant and one Catholic, were killed on the spot, and two more died later of their injuries. Seventeen others were wounded before police broke up the fight and read the crowd the Riot Act. This law empowered authorities to disperse public gatherings when they became violent.

It was common for Protestant organizations in nineteenth-century Newfoundland to hold parades over the winter holidays.

Many men in the colony belonged to fraternal orders, which were partly social clubs that created opportunities to mingle, partly charitable groups that rallied support for community causes, and partly mutual aid societies that provided for their members during times of crisis.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, most fraternal organizations were affiliated with a religious denomination. Catholics had the Fishermen’s Star of the Sea Association, and Protestants had the Loyal Orange Association and the Society of United Fishermen.

The Catholic fraternities typically held annual parades on St. Patrick’s Day, but scheduling a Protestant celebration was a bit more complicated.

Orangemen’s Day, which commemorates the victory of Protestant British king William of Orange over Catholic king James II at the Battle of the Boyne, falls on July 12th. That was the height of the fishing season when most rural men couldn’t afford to take a day off work.

Instead, Protestant organizations took to holding their processions in winter, when there was a brief respite from the seasonal labour of fishing, hunting, planting and sealing. St. Stephen’s Day on December 26 and New Year’s Day were popular choices for parade dates.

Harbour Grace had a history of political violence. Previous elections had sparked riots and shootings, but relations between Catholics and Protestants in the community had been peaceful for decades.

During Christmas 1883, tensions were running high.

On Christmas Eve, rumours that officials were paying out money to men willing to work on the new railway drew a crowd to downtown Harbour Grace. The men had a few drinks while they waited, and when the cash didn’t materialize, they started fighting amongst themselves.

The scuffle split along religious lines, and the Roman Catholic church was damaged. The local district court judge read the Riot Act, closed the pubs and assigned additional police to patrol the area.

When the Orange Association took to the streets two days later on St. Stephen’s Day, their annual march lit a powder keg.

The Christmas Eve damage to the Catholic church, the ongoing harassment of the people of Riverhead by the Protestants of nearby Courage’s Beach, and the denunciations of Protestantism by new Catholic priests in the area combined to make the Orange march seem like an affront to local Catholics.

The lethal riot that followed, which came to be known as the Harbour Grace Affray, shocked a colony whose citizens believed they were moving past sectarianism and toward a more equitable future.

Nineteen men were arrested for the murder of William Janes but acquitted after a trial that then-Prime Minister and Attorney General William Whiteway called, “one perjured mess.” A second trial for the murder of William French reached the same verdict seven months later.

The acquittals were widely seen as a miscarriage of justice, especially because most of the jurors were Catholic. There was so much fear of civil unrest that the Newfoundland government asked the British Admiralty to send a warship to stay until the following spring.

While there was no further physical violence that winter, the public dismay had far-reaching political consequences.

There was so much disagreement over how to address the affair in parliament that Prime Minister Whiteway lost support from both Roman Catholics and Orangemen in the House of Assembly and was ultimately forced to resign.

According to journalist A. B. Morine, before the Affray, there were three major religious affiliations in Newfoundland: Roman Catholics, Orangemen, and other Protestants, who preferred to keep the peace between denominations. But he said the trial had “bound together in closer bonds than before existed, the entire Protestant elements of this country.”

A new Reform party, founded on a platform of Protestant rights, swept the 1885 elections.

When the dust cleared, even the reformers resumed appointing Catholics to civil service positions, continuing the process of integrating the colony’s government.

Though it briefly stoked anti-Catholic feeling amongst Protestants, the Harbour Grace Affray was, in the end, a reminder of the dangers of sectarianism and, in the season of peace, a lesson in the value of loving one's neighbour.