The Orangeman, Second Edition: The Life and Times of Ogle Gowan

From the end of the Napoleonic Wars to Confederation, central Canada was awash with migrants from the British Isles and their cultural values. The raw prejudice that they brought with them – against the French, the Catholics, and even Yanks and Europeans – bound together the eventual political majority in Ontario. The Orangeman uses the life of Ogle Gowan, an Irish Protestant upstart from County Wexford who turned central Canada Orange, to explore these forces.

Gowan was ambitious, malicious...