Spring’s a weird thing. One minute you’re walking down Broadview, the next you’re smack dab in the middle of a Flintstone’s episode.
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Reality check: that’s Jack Layton’s constituency office across the street to be sure.
It’s the sign on the old church, with the bricked up windows, that’s throwing me off – The Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.
Not to be confused with The Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, of course, but it’s hard not to.
Turns out there is a connection, but the Buffaloes here in the Big Smoke, the “real” ones for our purposes, don’t much like being compared to cartoon characters in furry hats.
They don’t like being described as the “poor man’s Freemasons” either.(Although that would be cooler. Think the Robin Hood of secret societies.)
Or “Boozy Buffs,” for that matter, being senstive and all to the “boisterous buffoonery” typically associated with members of the first lodge founded at the Harp Tavern in London way back when.
The Buffs are a touchy bunch. (See aforementioned bricked-up windows).
Can’t tell much about the herd here in T.O., except that they don’t like flyers (see mailbox) and that perhaps one or two in the east-end neighbourhood are just as confused as I am about them. Check the “fuck off” scrawled on the back wall.
Probably just kids.
The Buffaloes go way back, started as a fraternal order in the 1800s by old stage hands. Apparently, the stage hands were not invited to after-show parties with the theatre actors, so they started their own get-togethers.
Apparently, some strange initiation rituals were practiced.
According to one description published in 1822, the initiation of a Buffalo involves a chair in the middle of a room, a bandage placed over the eyes of the “degraded wretch,” a “Kangaroo Leap” and MC dressed in a wig for the occasion.
The organization claims chapters in Spain, Tasmania, South Africa – pretty much anywhere there are middle-aged men into secret handshakes and vaguely religious pinky rings.
The credo, call it a modern bromance: “Buffaloism teaches the necessity of exercising the virtues of charity and affability, and… Brotherly love among brethren.”
Talk of politics, religion or gambling is strictly forbidden. (What else is there?) – except some lodges allow booze.
There’s supposedly no colour barrier to membership but “Communists are not welcome because a member of the Order must declare his allegiance to Constitutional authority of his country.” Guess I’m out.
