The Stony Monday Riots

Despite whatever mild-mannered reputation Ottawa may have, the city’s history is rife with roughneck tales of debauchery, riots, and malfeasance going back decades. Here are a few examples of tales seldom told that could easily change your mind about this city and its residents.

In the early 19th century, the construction of the Rideau Canal brought large numbers of recently arrived Irish Catholic labourers into the area. After the canal was completed, and with increased unemployment in the region, the Irish Catholics became restless and revived old animosities with the French, English, and Protestant Irish. A group of disgruntled Irish known as the Shiners began to wage campaigns against French raftsmen and the Protestant fraternal order the Orangemen, escalating from street fights and bar brawls to a series of assaults and murders in 1837 (this period of Ottawa Valley history, 1837-1845, became known as the “Shiners’ Wars”). The end of the Shiner terror came when their leader, Peter Aylen, left Ottawa for Aylmer after a series of particularly brutal attacks, but tensions among the various groups remained.

Most of the affluent Englishmen who lived in Uppertown (now Centretown) were Tories, while the French and Irish were Reformers. The Tories spent much of the 1840s incensed at the Reformist-minded politics of Lord Elgin, then Governor General of Canada. After riots started in Montreal, where Tories burnt down the Parliament Building located there, Elgin was prompted to look for another capital for Canada. When His Lordship announced plans to visit Bytown in September of 1849, the people of Lowertown began preparing a royal welcome. Uppertowners, meanwhile, argued that Elgin should be ignored, and a meeting was called in the Byward Market to discuss the situation. The gathering on September 17 erupted into another riot. Stones were thrown, mayhem broke out, and one person was shot on what became known as “Stony Monday.” The British militia was called in to block the Lowertowners from advancing into Uppertown the following day, and the riot was dispersed.