St. Patrick’s parade queen selected
A parade queen has been chosen for the St Patrick’s parade next month.
Also note the big green Celtic cross logo further down. I once asked a parade marshal what “faith and fatherland” referred to, and he had no idea of either.
In this day and age do we need a beauty queen to “crown” an event, and an organization using a cross and the motto “faith and fatherland” which nobody can explain? What exactly is it that we’re hanging onto here?
Joey 11:30 on 2023-02-06 Permalink
Agreed re: the beauty queen. Faith and fatherland seems fairly self-evident, no? A quick googling suggests an Irish take on “Queen and country,” with a sense that, for some, ‘Irishness’ is fundamentally about (presumably) Catholic faith and fealty to the ancestral homeland. I kind of prefer this approach – crosses, religious nationalist mottos, etc. – to a half-hearted attempt to make the St. Patrick’s Parade some generalized/corporatized meaningless marketing exercise.
JS 11:58 on 2023-02-06 Permalink
I marched in the parade last year with my Joycean colleagues for Festival Bloomsday Montreal, waving and shaking my noisemaker at the attendees. It was cold and rainy, and the St Patrick’s Day parade was less well attended than the viceregal parade that makes its way though Dublin in Ulysses. Can someone tell me what’s in it for the people who actually wake up and go downtown to watch the thing in the cold?
Kate 12:10 on 2023-02-06 Permalink
JS, there are usually floats from anglo media and marching entities from other towns, but – as this piece notes obliquely – that wasn’t the case last year, since next month’s is being billed as its “first full-scale return” since the pandemic.
I’m not sure why anyone would thrill to see e.g. Mutsumi Takahashi on a float, but people do.
Of course there’s also a tradition of getting drunk in the various drinking establishments along the route.
Joey: to the Irish, “faith” can be a very divisive thing. From what I can tell, Faith and Fatherland is a motto of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which came about in response to the militantly Protestant Orange Order and its activities. That bit of history involves not only Ireland but also Canada and the U.S., and is a real mess.
Not sure the link to all that is still an element in what has become, basically, as you say, a meaningless marketing exercise. Most people now are not aware of it, nor of its originally divisive intent.
I have an Ancient Order of Hibernians watch chain which belonged to my grandfather, so I assume he was a member. He died before I was born so I was never able to ask him about it. I know he walked in the parade when it was mostly a matter of men from Irish Catholic parishes walking down Ste‑Catherine Street, not commercial floats.
shawn 12:22 on 2023-02-06 Permalink
Someone better than me might relate the pivotal role that long-gone raconteur Nick Auf der Mar once played in keeping the thing alive? Something like it was going to be cancelled and Nick and someone came out of Darwin’s pub drunk the night before and painted a green line down Ste-Catherine?
MarcG 13:38 on 2023-02-06 Permalink
Dug up this old gem from the sludge of Montreal history https://web.archive.org/web/20110403143016/http://www.mook-life.com/st-patricks-day-parade-maximum-mookness/
Kate 14:56 on 2023-02-06 Permalink
Mooks! Thank you, MarcG.
Just don’t anybody write about “St. Patty” around here.
I vaguely remember about the green line painting, but not why it was being done.