More peace, order, and good government

Additional heterosexual Canadian history, again taken from the February 2001 Beaver. This'un aboot charivari.

An old codger who marries a sweet young thing, a widow who hitches up a little too soon after, an overly keen cad who weds a rich and on-her-last-legs lady. We do noooo-ht apprrrrrove.

And we say so. In as humiliating a way as possible, from the days of New France to the early 20th century. "Blowing on horns, sawing cracked fiddles, clattering skillet lids together, and banging out vicious tattoos on tin pots and copper kettles, the whole of the outraged citizenry would assemble in a nocturnal display at the newlyweds' house. If the noise-bombarded couple dared to peer out through the bedroom curtains, they would have beheld a most frightful spectacle. As Susannah Moodie described it in 1852 in Roughing It In The Bush, the torch-lit antagonists disguised themselves in strange, ritualistic costumes, 'putting their clothes on the hind part before... wearing horrible masks, with grotesque caps on their heads, adorned with cocks' feathers and bells.' The crowd would then bang fiercely on the door, insisting that the couple pay the price of a peaceful honeymoon by furnishing the crowd with whisky, entertainment, or a sum of money for charity -- sometimes as much as $100. Once the fee was paid, the humbled newlyweds were pardoned of their improprieties and the charivari was finished. But if the couple refused to pay, the crowd would return again and again every night until the fee was extorted."

Ya don'ts pay, ya mights get beaten up. In 1823, a Montrealer who called in the police was repaid with smashed windows and a ransacked house. One Ontario man, who in 1890 was accused of stealing another's wife, was shot to death when he resisted the destruction of his home's roof.