A young, first-time voter in the upcoming federal election emails me to ask why the Liberals are Grits and the Conservatives are Tories. Feisty phrases and blunt words once made up the Canadian political vocabulary on the grass-roots level. For example, at a political rally in Dundas County in the 1930s, Mitch Hepburn, the Liberal premier of Ontario from 1934 to 1942, jumped up on a manure spreader and began his speech, “First time in my life I ever spoke from a Tory platform!” The Grit crowd roared its approval. But, as one moves closer to an Ottawa cradled in deep-piled lairs of pelf and power, one discovers that circumlocution and weasel words smother plain speech and leave clarity of utterance gasping. Nowadays the gobbledygook of sound-bite political correctness coats any clear word with a rich syrup of unction and specious caring. A one-legged janitor in the Canadian Parliament buildings is a monopodal interior-environment consultant. So, if you catch him malingering, don’t you dare say, “Just mop, mope. And cut out those cheap Long John Silver imitations. And I know damn well you sold your missing leg to a Mexican dog food factory to finance your hydroponic marijuana operation in Kanata.” No, if you seek political approval, don’t ever say that. Just smile—crookedly.
Grits = The Liberal Party of Canada One axiom of Canadian politics: radicals of either extreme must move toward the centre to gain power. This is nowhere more evident than in the history of Canadian liberalism. Liberals began as the party of those opposed to colonial vested interests, suspicious of the governor and his ruling clique.
The Clear Grit Party of Upper Canada Consider the Clear Grit Party, leftist reformers who first elected candidates in Upper Canada in the 1850s. Clear grit was an American adjectival phrase that meant originally ‘composed of the real stuff, not fake.’ It was introduced into Canadian English in Nova Scotia at the end of the 1830s by Nova Scotian lawyer/politician-turned-author Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pictured below right. Until the advent of Charles Dickens, Haliburton was the most popular author of humorous pieces in the English language. Haliburton invented a traveling Yankee clock peddler named Sam Slick and used him to comment satirically on The Clockmaker; or The Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick of Slickville appeared first as columns in 1835 in Joseph Howe’s radical newspaper, The Novascotian. The sketches were published in Halifax, 1836; London and Philadelphia, 1837 (first series); Halifax, London and Philadelphia, 1838 (second series); and 1840 (third series). Here’s Sam Slick, in the third series, page xxxii, talking about fine French wines to some Nova Scotians, “Champaigne [sic]...if you get the clear grit, there is no mistake in it.” Some years later, in the May 1884 number of The Fortnightly Review, a popular 19th-century British liberal magazine, there is this line: “There arose up [in Canada] a political party of a Radical persuasion, who were called Clear-Grits, and the Clear-Grits declared for the secularisation of the Clergy Reserves.” The Clear Grits eventually merged with the Liberal party. And Canadian Liberals today still bear their nickname, the Grits.
Tories = The Conservative Party of Canada The history of the word Tory is more complex. It begins simply enough as a putative Irish agent-noun, *tóraidhe, meaning ‘pursuer.’ Tory was a 17th-century insulting synonym for bog-trotter, one of the landless Irish outlaws who roamed Ireland pursuing and murdering English settlers in the Emerald Isle and pursuing and stealing cattle etc. They were also called “Wild Irish.” Tory later emerged as a term of insult for any Irish Catholic. In the long wars between Roman Catholics and English Protestants, one political skirmish of 1679-80 involved a controversy about whether or not the Catholic Duke of York ought to be permitted to be King of England. His Catholic supporters were called Exclusioners. Many were Irish, the wild Irish to their enemies, hence bog-trotters and Tories! The tersest explanation, though dense — so read it carefully — is this passage from the Oxford English Dictionary: “3. a. Hence, from 1689, the name of one of the two great parliamentary and political parties in England, and (at length) in Great Britain. The party sprang from the 17th century Royalists or Cavaliers, and its members at first were more or less identical with the Anti-Exclusionists or ‘Tories’ in [the sense discussed above]. For some years after 1689 the Tories leant more or less decidedly towards the dethroned House of Stuart; but upon the accession of George III they, as a party, abandoned this attitude, retaining the principle of strenuously upholding the constituted authority and order in Church and State, and of opposing concessions in the direction of greater religious liberty. In opposition to the growing demands of Liberalism, a consistent antagonism to measures for widening the basis of parliamentary representation, or tending to impair the exclusive privileges of the Church as by law established, became their most marked characteristic; but this has in course of time undergone many modifications.
A caricature of George III who was not, as the American rebels claimed, “insane.” The King of England suffered from an hereditary disease, porphyria.
“As a formal name, ‘Tory’ was superseded c1830 by CONSERVATIVE, merged after 1886 (when the Conservatives were joined by many who had previously belonged to the Liberal party, in opposing Home Rule for Ireland) in that of UNIONIST. But ‘Tory’ is still retained (1) colloquially; (2) as expressing attachment to a policy either more old-fashioned (cf. old or high Tory in b), or more positive and constructive than that of ordinary Conservatism (cf. Tory democracy, C. 3); (3) in hostile usage, identifying the party with the bigotry and opposition to reform and progress charged upon earlier Toryism. Opposed originally and during the 18th c. to WHIG; later to LIBERAL, and (still more) to RADICAL.” Copyright © Oxford University Press 2008. All rights reserved.
Tory as Canadian Political Label As to the Canadian use of the term Tory, tied as it is to the word conservative, here is a quotation from an unsigned Trent University archival overnote concerning a Progressive Conservative Party of Canada Handbook published in June, 1949. “The root of the modern day Progressive Conservative Party of Canada is found in the 1854 Liberal Conservative Coalition Government of the Province of Canada which was headed by Sir John A. Macdonald. Between 1873 and The ideologies of the Conservative Party have remained fundamentally the same since the inception of the party with some variations over the years. The party is tied, albeit loosely, to the British Conservative Party, and in turn, to the ideals of toryism (collectivism and privledge as the salient features of social and political life), but the Canadian Conservatives have also supported business liberalism. Business liberalism (ie. free enterprise) in combination with toryism are two sets of ideas which are not readily reconciled, therefore, the Conservative Party, regardless of title, has constantly been shifting, since its inception, to keep these ideals in balance with public and party opinion, and has not always been successful. Since 1935, the success of the federal Liberal Party has heavily outweighed the success of the Progressive Conservative Party. Some of the more notable Conservative Party leaders include Sir John A. Macdonald, R.B. Bennett, John Diefenbaker, and Brian Mulroney.”
Ontario Tory Toronto was H.Q. for the Big Blue Machine, the Progressive Conservative power bloc and well-oiled election organization that ran Ontario from 1943 to 1985 under the premiers George Drew, Leslie Frost, John Robarts, and William Davis. But the province’s reputation as a Conservative stronghold caused comment a century before. British novelist Charles Dickens visited Hogtown in 1842, and wrote back to his friend and later biographer John Foster, “The wild and rabid toryism of Toronto is, I speak seriously, appalling.” (italics are Dickens). How times change and tempus fugit ! On that note, I can only add my electoral advice to all loyal Canadians: vote early and vote often.
copyright © 2008 William Gordon Casselman
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Tory - origin of the politcal term Grit - origin of the Canadian Political Party Nickname tories & grits Tories and Grits origins of the Canadian Political Party Nicknames Canadian Political Parties: The Tories & the Grits historical anecdotes about Canadian politics
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the doings of his day including Nova Scotian social behaviour and Canada’s relations with the United States and with Great Britain. Mark Twain read Haliburton with approval and even picked up a few satirical ploys from him. The character Sam Slick spoke in racy American slang that included phrases like ‘clear grit.’
1878, the Liberal Conservative Party dropped the Liberal label in favour of the title Conservative Party which was in keeping with the flavour of Macdonald's National Policy and pro-British election platform. From 1917 to 1920 the party was known as the Union Party. The name changed again to the National Liberal and Conservative Party from 1920 to 1922. It then reverted back to the original name of Liberal Conservative Party until 1938 when it became the National Conservative Party. The name of the party changed once again in 1942 with the election of former Progressive Party member and Manitoba Premier, John Bracken, to the Conservative Party leadership. The name became the Progressive Conservative Party, as it is known today. 
