h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

anhaga in England the protestant/catholic issue mostly lies sleeping. My grandad was from Newton Stewart and my great grandad played for Queen of the South..so I got stuff most English wouldn't.

But yes in Scotland and obviously NI it sleeps less soundly.

You said it Anhaga. Ours dates back to the Jacobite Rebellion (Scottish Civil War), Culloden, Scottish Protestant settlers in Ireland, Irish Catholic immigrants into Scotland, sectarian education policies, Masonic Lodges & the Police.

The comedian Frankie Boyle got it spot on when he said Al Quaeda were wasting their time trying to bring religious violence to Glasgow - they didn't even have their own football team!!

Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq? Bloody amateur Johnny-come-latelys compared to the West of Scotland.

I think a major reason the Catholic/Protestant thing is in a vegetative coma here is that the largest Catholic population block, the Quebecois, got sick of the Catholic Church running their lives and their politics and sometime around 1968 said 'screw this religion crap: let's party!' So, now, Quebec is one of the most secular, non-religious societies in the world. And in the rest of the country there are so many bleeding religions and denominations, there's never enough people together of one sort to actually constitute a crowd, let alone a mob.

And the closest we come to football hooliganism is the occasional Stanley Cup riot, in which the fans of a champion team gather in the centre of their own city with a large quantity of beer and round about midnight unaccountable start to smash windows and set fire to police cars. But they don't beat each other up as they're all on the same team.

""Bloody amateur Johnny-come-latelys""

how can you have a proper ruck with out a skinfull on a saturday night

"" sick of the Catholic Church running their lives and their politics and sometime around 1968 said 'screw this religion crap: let's party!' ""

imagine in the southern US the ""Hounourable society of Damn Yankees"" put on blue coats and marched up main street with fife and drum every year on the anervercary of some battle just to rub it in who won the war,

thats the sort of level of animosity were are talking about here

A few blocks from me is one of the oldest buildings in town. It's a little white clapboard thing with pretty orange trim and in big friendly letters across the gable end it is named 'Orange Hall'. I think I'm one of the few people in town who knows what the name means. For everybody else it's a warm, cozy, intimate venue for musical performances (I quite enjoyed one of Dougie Maclean's performances there years ago) and one of the stages for our annual Fringe Theatre Festival. The Orangemen are as comatose here as is the Catholic Church in Quebec.


Thank goodness.


Here's a bit about the building: http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=5900

And for Taff, who I assume is at work, it just has a few pictures of the place and a brief bit of history, built in 1903, they used to have the parade on the 12th of July but they don't any more and now what's left of the local Order pretty much just raises money for children's charities. Seems a good and proper end for the bunch.

if no one is throwing bricks at you on the 12th of july, its hardly worth shouting " the pope"

anhaga I'm quite curious about the seeming general peacableness of your culture..I wonder how such a thing came about..and do you think that's an entirely a good thing?

""seeming general peacableness of your culture..""

the canuks have been at the forefront in defending queen/king and empire, a formidable fighting force

Yep they were fantastic in WWII...I saw a doco about young Canadians coming over and volunteering as pilots in Battle of Britain..and I was in Dieppe when there was a big anniversary to to with D day.

We've talked about this before (that's you, isn't it Effers?) haven't we?

Certainly, I think it's a good thing.

And

I'm pretty much convinced (with a few much greater Canadian thinkers than me) that our current state is largely a product of the fact that everyone is part of some sort of minority and no one feels themselves to be part of any particularly strong majority. Also, there have been some very exceptional conciliators who have lead our country. In the 1840s there were Baldwin and Lafontaine who ended u`p being sort of joint ~Prime Ministers of the United Canadas, the Quebecois Catholic being elected in an Orange Protestant Ontario and the Anglo being being elected in Quebec. Together they refused to call out the militia to quell a rioting mob in the capital, feeling that such action would only cause increased resentment and division. These two set something of a `pattern (which certainly hasn't always been followed) but generally, our leaders will sit and talk for years until they come to a consensus rather than trying to force an issue. This `patience is why it took over a hundred years for us to have a Constitution which we can actually amend ourselves (we used to have to ask the British Parliament to amend it for us) and Quebec, although undoubtedly a part of the country, is not a signatory to that Constitution. In fact, a few years ago, our Parliament `passed a resolution declaring that Quebec is a Nation (of course, that's nothing terribly new: we have hundreds of First Nations within our borders) and, the Leader of the Opposition stated a week or two ago, while campaigning in our current election thing, that as far as he was concerned, the Quebecois can consider Quebec to be their Nation and Canada to be their State in whatever order they prefer. Wouldn't you like to live in a condition in which one of your national party leaders could say something similar about the Scots and Scotland without any English complaints nor Scottish jingoism being heard?

What it comes down to I think is that there are very few people here who believe that fighting or even arguing loudly is better than calmly talking things out. This is why the actions of the police in Toronto at the recent G20 summit are so shocking to us. That's not the way we expect our neighbours to act.

On a family note: my great grandfather was murdered in a dispute with his neighbour over some straying chickens. I can't imagine ever getting to such a point with my neighbours. I can't imagine even raising my voice to them.

We're all in it together.

>>Yet strangely, Rangers are linked with Everton & Celtic with Liverpool.

I was wrong, so. That's my point - in Liverpool itself there was no link.

Yes, we had Orange Walks locally - but it was people coming over on the boat! In my area they took a convoluted ~traditional~ route to make sure they intimidated all the Catholic schools. It was like Goedel's Konigsberg Bridge Problem.



I guessed Everton as Catholic because a) My family is tribally Liverpool (although I have no interest in football), b) We had Irish friends who were Everton and b) someone with a (presumed) Irish surname recently mentioned Everton on F/b

>>Would you believe one of the people credited with lessening sectarian divisions in the West of Scotland is Margaret Thatcher.

Im reasonably sure she didnt do it on purpose. But, yes, good point about the yards.

@anghaga

When I lived in Canada I met someone from Hamilton, Ont. He proudly told me about how his Orange Lodge kept alive the traditions from the old country. He seemed surprised to hear that we werent that big into it. Bit like the person who was sirprised that St Patricks Day wasnt much celebrated im England (this was in the 80s - height of the trouble and pre-Celtic Tiger

>that's you, isn't it Effers?<

Of course its bloody me. But people need to be protected from reading the word now as a name.

Yes, our military record is something we are quietly proud of (my grandfather served at Passchendaele. He was damaged by it.)

However, our previous top General in his memoir made clear that he felt the finest moments of his military were in disaster relief within our borders rather than any foreign action, either in Peacekeeping or Afghanistan.

Again, sure, we'll fight if we have to, but we'd rather help each other.

At least, that's the way I feel myself. Maybe I'm just projecting.

'When I lived in Canada I met someone from Hamilton . . .'

Yeah, but that's Ontario, Ed. They're kind of backward.






(I was born in and grew up in Ontario.)


I'm sure the members of Orange lodges feel that they keep up the traditions, but their parades are rare, if they happen at all, and orangemen are rarer than Knights of Columbus. In Ontario in the 1800s you could be almost certain that any English speaking male was a member of a lodge. Today . . . Well, I've never knowingly met an orangeman. Around here they seem to be far, far rarer than Muslim Filipina convenience store clerks or ethnic Russian Ukrainian hair-colourists (my neighbour is one of those).

>On a family note: my great grandfather was murdered in a dispute with his neighbour over some straying chickens.<

What an amazing story. I'd love to know more. It would make a great guide entry.

>We're all in it together.<

Yep so our present government keep saying.

"">We're all in it together.<

Yep so our present government keep saying.""

its just the depth that varies

Here's a piece about the murder by Desmond Morton, one of Canada's big historians. You have to sign up for a free trial to read the whole thing.


http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-131126854.html

You'll notice that sectarian considerations were important in those days.