What's in a Name?

Have you ever wondered where the nickname ‘Tory’ comes from? It is actually very interesting and goes back over three hundred years. In England during the middle 1600s, the King and his Parliament were at loggerheads. King Charles I believed he should have power like a centralized European monarch. Opposed to the king were those who believed Parliament had clearly defined rights, especially when it came to taxes. Eventually, there would be war between the King and this vocal parliamentary opposition, and in 1649, after losing, Charles was tried (see below) and lost his head.

But England would be without a king for less than two decades. In 1660, Charles II, the son of his disposed father, was restored to the throne albeit with more limited powers. Those who supported a more constitutional monarchy were insulted as ‘Whigs’ after the Scot-Gaelic whiggamor, meaning cattle driver. The more royalist faction were themselves labeled ‘Tories’ after the Irish word tóir meaning bandit or outlaw. Eventually these insults were embraced and there would Tory factions in Westminster from the 1670s until they modernized as Conservatives in the late 1850s.

In eighteenth century North America, the word Tory would again become an insult. As the 13 colonies matured and became agitated about their status as English without representation, the Tory moniker re-emerged. Once war erupted supporters of independence labeled those who supported the Crown; Tories. In due course, many of these Tories would travel north as Loyalists and found English-speaking Canada.

In Canada, Tory would come to mean something similar to that of Britain. The modern origins of our party traces itself to the 1854 alliance between ‘Les Bleus’ in Canada East (Quebec) and British-model Tories in Canada West (Ontario). This party was that of a young visionary named John Alexander MacDonald and, of course, we all know how that story turned out.