Hey, welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's here too. She's just sound mute and she's sitting in for Dave, who's not here. And this is short stuff.
That's right about the Toronto clown riot.
That was dead on Toronto, that was.
Supposed to be a clown horn. It sounded like a sick mule in my head. It was kind of come out better and I thought about doing a second take, but who cares, Let's leave it in there.
It's fun.
It was a sick mule doing the disco call wow. And we also called a lot of information from the Toronto Star, Spacing magazine, specifically Adam Bunch on Spacing magazine, and the Circus Diaries.
That's right, the sexiest mini series.
The Red Shoe Circus Diaries.
But we are talking about one of our towns that we love a lot, Toronto, and we are coming back there to Massey Hall, by the way, as part of our Nadian tour. We always love Massy Holl in particular and playing to our friends there. I think that I think our very first live show ever was in Toronto, right.
I think it was actually, yeah, our Bars episode good Call Chuck, that was our first one.
That's right. That's what gave us the taste.
Everybody h the taste of Toronto.
That's right.
And also i've spoken to Chuck everybody. He's promised to do like ninety percent less. Gordon Lightfoot chokes this time.
That's right.
But we need to hop in the way back machine for this one, because we're going back to eighteen fifty five when Toronto was a different place. It's not the it wasn't the metropolitan kind of refined big city that it is now.
It was. It was tough.
It had like three hundred and fifty two drinking establishments for the forty thousand people. There had a lot of brothels, and they were people that liked to to mix it up. It seems like back in the day.
For sure, not just the people at Tronto, but the people who were in circuses too like to mix it up. And specifically, in July eighteen fifty five, when our event takes place, the SB House Star Troop in Menagerie and circus was in town, and that circus was from New York State and they showed up in Toronto. They set up their tents and said, hey, everybody come see. And of course since there's a circus, even in eighteen fifty five circus, there were a bunch of clowns there. Chuck
and these clowns. They had a long day of performing and they said, let's go to a local brothel. And they did as a group.
That's right.
They said, let's go get drunk and doing other things you can do with brothels. And they went to Mariann Armstrong's brothel. It's a corner of King and John Streets, and this happened to be a brothel where that was kind of the main hangout of the Hook and Ladder fire brigade. So we need to explain a couple of things about these two groups. The clowns at the time are not the lovable psychopaths that we have now in our circuses. They were, you know, they were kind of
the road crew as well as clowns. So they had to put up these big tents, break everything down, get all the gear in place. So they were they were brawny, like big dudes and the firefighters of the day in Toronto at least, and I bet they were like this in a.
Lot of places.
It was before the city government had, you know, was in charge of that kind of thing. So you had private fire departments and private companies that you know, build for their services, like we'll put out your fire for this amount of money. So you have fire private fire companies like racing to fires to get there first. And there were several instances of them arriving at the same time and like fighting one another to put out the fire while the fire's burning.
Yeah, several instances. One as recent as just a couple of weeks before that Hook and Land Company who called Marianne Armstrong's house they'll repute their hangout. They showed up to one and there was already another company there and they got into a fight and a riot broke out, right, So there was a firefighter riot at a burning house. The firefighters all decided instead of putting the house out, they let it burn and looted the houses around it.
It was that kind of riot. These are the firefighters in Toronto at the time, right, So by the time this Toronto clown riot happens, the Hook and Ladder Company has already been in one riot within the last few weeks, and I guess they were itching for another one or something.
Yeah, So they were there and they were hanging out and they were drinking, and the clowns show up and they're ready to do their thing. And pretty much everyone's account is the same is that the clown started it. I didn't see anything that said that the firefighters did. So it was either like clowns cutting in line or
there was a clown that knocked. This all sounds very funny, by the way, even as it's coming out of my mouth, or a clown knocked the firefighters had off and are and all of a sudden, a big brawl breaks out, and maybe we should take a break there and tell everybody who won right after.
This, okay, and things.
Like jumping job, I'll tell you who won, Chuck. The clowns won, you know it. I don't think anybody disputes that. Because one firefighter was seriously injured and so he was kind of removed from the brothel, and as his fellow firefighters were dragging him off, they all retreated as well. So the clowns were like, okay, great, well we're here now, so they just joy the rest of the night there, right,
that's right. The problem was is that the city of Toronto at the time was run and was for like one hundred plus years by an Irish Protestant group called the Orange Order. It was kind of like a fraternal order, and if you wanted to be an elected official, a cop, a firefighter, if you wanted a government job, you basically had to be an Orange Man a member of the Order. And the Hook and latter Company were all Orangemen, which meant they were deeply connected to a lot of other
people they called brothers in town. And the clowns had just stepped in a big time.
Yeah, this has got to be from Syracuse University's Orangemen.
It's got to be related, right.
I don't know.
I meant to look that up, but as soon as I saw Orangemen, I was like, wait a minute, Syracuse, So I imagine that came from the same Irish Protestant order.
That would be a weird coincidence. How many Orangemen are there? After all?
Well, they grow a lot of oranges in Syracuse, so maybe that's.
Okay, that's probably it.
Gentle Winter's there, good for the fruit. So word spreads about what happens at this fight, and the next day a bunch of mad Orange Men show up and they're like, we're gonna we're gonna kick the fun out of these clowns. They started attacking the circus basically, and it got really out of hand.
Yeah, it did get out of hand. They were throwing rocks, they were beating up the clowns, and the crowd just kept growing and growing. And so this not just the clowns, but the entire circus was overwhelmed. Then the Hook and Ladder Company, who had been in the fight the day before with the clowns, they showed up and rather than put out any fires, they actually started fires. They started burning down the tents. They had fire axes which they
used to break up the property of the circus. They like everybody kind of dragged the circus performers wagons down to this lakeside and tipped them over. Yeah, it was a bad jam for sure.
Yeah, so the circus is in big trouble at this point. So they're like, you know, thank god, the police. The police show up, but they were also corrupt because they were also orange men, orange people, or at least the chief was, and I bet a lot of the cops were. Mayor Quimby finally steps in and calms everything down. He arrives on the scene, and this is I love this because this is totally made up lore, but I've got
to read it anyway. He said to have grabbed the axe out of the hand of a rioter midswing as he was about to bring.
It down upon a clown.
Yeah.
The mayor's office put that out the next day.
For sure. He was shirtless too when he did it.
Yeah.
The police chief, who, like you said, was an orangeman and was very corrupt. He is supposedly credited with saving the animals, or keeping the rioters from harming the animals, which yeah, really the elephants. It's a big mark in favor. Frankly, no, for sure. Aside from that though, the police just sat on their hands. They purposefully did not intervene. Right. Eventually this riot what became known as the Toronto clown Riot or the Toronto circus Riot. I prefer clown riot, what about you.
Yeah, that sounds that's the better band name, so that's what I'll go with.
Sure, it eventually settled down. The mob dispersed and the circus people came back and grabbed their things and they high tailed it out of town. They were like, we're going to Ottawa. This place is way too hot for us.
You know what.
Now, I'm thinking, though, you can't use Toronto Clown Riot as a band name because once insane clown Posse did that that. You just can't even come close to touching that word. Could you get a band name, I don't think.
Could you use it as like an album date?
Maybe, but I don't know who wants to be associated with the Juggalos.
You know, I know some Jugglos or former Juggalos. They're good people. Oh yeah, all right, I'm going to stand up for him. Sure, look at.
You going to beat for the Juggalos.
Sure.
I feel like Aaron Cooper has done.
We talked about Juggles before, and I believe there are pictures of us as Juggalos if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, for sure, I think from our Magnets episode. Maybe.
Yeah, that sounds right, So Chuck.
Okay, Obviously the whole thing settles down, everybody gets level headed again, and justice prevails.
Yeah, yeah, we'll see, We'll let the audience decide. Seventeen people were charged with rioting. It was basically because of the corruption that there wasn't a big widespread dragnet over this whole thing, but the one you know, it took a while, but the one good thing that came out of this was it was kind of the last straw for the people of Toronto with like these corrupt Orangemen
kind of running everything. It was kind of like the you know New York City's Tammany, right, Yeah, And they were like, we're we're not going to handle this anymore.
We can't be like New York.
And so the Reform Party comes into power and the idea of reform is top of mind. It took about one hundred and years to kind of get the Orange men completely out of the picture.
That's kind of the weird part.
Yeah, Adam Bunch In that Spacing magazine article, he says, though the he points to the clown riot as like the turning point that eventually became the foundation for the modern less corrupt and less orange I guess police force and turn I'm going.
To look and see when I'm there, when I'm walking around, which is I'd love to do that one in there. I'm going to see if I see any like orangeman stuff anywhere.
Well, you want, you know, how you find out somebody's an orangeman? You should walk up to a cop and what you do is you hold out your hand like you're gonna shake it. And then the orange man handshake is when the cop goes to grab your hand to shake it, you take it away and smooth the side of your hair, and he or she will do the same thing. Just watch.
Oh okay, I thought you would go up to them and squeeze their skin like you were popping a zet to see if any orange essential oil comes out.
That works too, Yeah, all right, okay, I think short stuff is.
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