The Orangeman: The Life and Times of Ogle Gowan

W.H. Heick is a professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Arthur Lower once made the comment that, as a historian, he had ostrich-like wings! Being fettered by historical facts, he was prevented from letting his imagination soar as he wrote. Don Akenson, historian and novelist, has been able, in this fictional biography, to blend his imagination with his historian’s experience to produce a very fine study of Ogle Gowan, the nineteenth-century leader of the Orange Lodge in Canada.

Akenson begins with a discussion of the “rising of 1798” in Ireland, which “fused in a single crucible every major Irish problem” (p.3) and created the situation which would, up to the present day, defy rational analysis or solution in Ireland itself. Ogle Gowan’s father participated in the “rising” five years before Ogle was born. Thus, for the Gowans and for the Irish, rebels and counter-revolutionaries, the myths which would dominate their lives were created and the weapons of courts, police, and legislature were established.

Ogle Gowan, born in the illegitimate line of Hunter Gowan’s family, spent his life seeking to legitimize his position in the family and in society. Highly ambitious, he served the Orange Lodge in order to have the order serve his own ambition. Driven from Ireland by his enemies’ vicious attacks on his respectability, Gowan came to British North America in 1829. Here he worked hard to found a form of Orange association: “... unimpeachably respectable, manifestly gentlemanly and ... undeniably aristocratic” (p.10). The Irish immigrants (Catholic and Protestant) formed a third of the population of Ontario in the Confederation era and Gowan strove to use the large Protestant faction to build for himself a political base and respectability. He succeeded within the lodge by gaining the highest rank of grand master, though he failed to satisfy his personal ambitions in the public realm; a cabinet post eluded him. The principal reason was that he misused his strong sexual drive and wound up in several situations which destroyed his public image. He was able to help infuse Canadian conservatism with a new vitality, replacing the selfishness of the “family compact” with a moderate Toryism based on the attributes of loyalty (anti-American, anti-republican, and pro-Empire), which John A. Macdonald, a fellow Orange associate, was also cultivating.

The Gowan story illustrates the strength of the Catholic/Protestant confrontation in nineteenth-century Canada and, therefore, also illuminates the most significant role of religion in the Confederation era. To this sectarian history is added that of immigrant history.

A more scholarly type of biography of Gowan is impossible because the sources are not available. Akenson has marshalled all possible sources — private papers, government records, newspapers, and his own writings. For each chapter he sets out a general note on sources used, rather than any specific footnotes. There is no index. Most of the dialogue, some of the historical settings, and some of the minor events are fictional, the result of sensible speculation.