"Pretend Catholics" and Stampeders: The Romanization of the Diocese of Arichat/Antigonish, 1851-1910

Abstract

On a sunlit Sunday morning in June 1896, Father Alexander MacDonald, the erudite professor of Latin, English, and Philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University, stood at the wooden pulpit of Immaculate Conception parish in rural Heatherton, Antigonish County, Nova Scotia, to read an address composed by his superior, Bishop John Cameron of Antigonish. There was apprehension in the professor’s voice as he began to deliver the carefully scripted note. It was the duty, so the bishop’s letter read, of every conscientious Catholic to vote for the Conservative party candidate in the impending federal election. No Catholic in the diocese (in good standing) had the right to dispute this edict, be they priest or layman. As MacDonald finished that sentence, the sound of three loud stomps on the wooden floor echoed through the building. At that moment some thirty to forty men, principal members of the Heatherton congregation, walked out of the building in protest. The “Heatherton Stampede,” now merely a footnote in the region’s history, was more significant than its immediate context. It was representative of a myriad of disobedient acts orchestrated by Nova Scotian Roman Catholics against their spiritual superiors from 1851 to 1910. Yet, despite the philosophical complexities, historians have explained the episode within the context of the partisan battles of the period. Politics, writes Cameron’s biographer, R.A. MacLean, “shook the even tenor of life in Heatherton, provided an exercise in ambulatory democracy and ensured a topic of conversation and gossip for lengthy lamp-lit hours.” In fact, he