[Grand Lodge]
The Address to the Brethren
by Mark S. Dwor
One of the advantages of being a Director of Education is that I can choose whatever topics interest me and it therefore gives me great satisfaction and pleasure to present a paper on the Address to the Brethren which is my favourite part of all the Masonic rituals. The first time that I heard it was at the Installation of the Officers of Commonwealth Lodge Lodge No. 156 a number of years ago, and R.W. Bro. G.Gerald Holmes of Centennial-King George Lodge No. 171 was called on at the end of a long and quite surprising evening to give the Address to the Brethren. I was astounded by this speech at the time, and I still look forward to going to Installations just to hear it.
I will be referring to the long version of theAddress to the Brethren, which is known, generically, as the Canadian Version. I will describe the background of this later on in the talk. Embarking upon research about the history of this piece of ritual and examining it made me, for a while, wonder if I could retain my enjoyment after I had disabused myself of some of my preconceived notions about the history of the ritual. I had always assumed that it was one of those pieces of ritual that was described to be used since time immemorial. I figured it dated back from early in the Eighteenth Century, because of the sentence structure and the cadence which reminded me of hearing a sermon in an Anglican church. Most of my preconceived notions were incorrect, as the rest of this paper shows.
The paper is divided into three parts: the first being the general history of where the Installation ceremony came from, and the second dealing with the Address to the Brethren as is practised in the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia, and the third deals with the language and component parts of the Address to the Brethren. I certainly have not answered all the questions raised in each of these three sections, but, for me, the most important point of this whole presentation is the continuity and history of this particular ritual and why the Address to the Brethren, either in long or short form, is so important. Along the way, we get to meet some interesting characters, particularly MW Bro. Otto Klotz in Ontario who was able to embody in his language the ideals as to what a Freemason is and how he should comport himself. These ideals of what a Freemason is, as compared to pure ritual performance and the advancement through the chairs, does not occupy much present Masonic writing, although it certainly did at the end of the last century.
The subtext of this whole paper really has to do with what has been called the content of Masonry, and I specifically refer those who are interested in this to read The Development of the Content of Masonry During the Eighteenth Century, by F.R.Worts, AQC 78, p.1 (1965) This paper outlines the gradual change from Masonry of the early 1800s to Masonry at the end of that century, by which time the potential of the Craft was beginning to be realized in that it was changing from an ethical philosophy aided by speculative thought and symbolism, to fulfilling the potential to make Masons morally conscious, to live righteous lives, and to practise every moral and social virtue.
There is a lot of material on this topic and related topics, as I have outlined, however, I would be remiss if I did not identify the two articles that would give the easiest access to the information: Installation Ceremony by Norman Spencer, ACQ 72 (1960), p.100, and The Freemason at Work by Harry Carr, specifically Question No.142, "The Evolution of the Installation Ceremony and Ritual" on p.284.
In the history of the New World there is a very clear dividing line, that is, 1492 when Columbus discovered it: everything before his discovery is known as preColumbian history and everything after is known as history. Similarly, the history of Craft Masonry can be divided into two large portions of history: the first being everything before the institution of the Grand Lodge in London in 1717, and everything subsequent to that. At least, from 1717 we have substantial written information and a convenient starting point, but the starting point is merely record keeping, it does not accurately reflect the fact that Masonry was well in existence before 1717.
The institution of the Grand Lodge in 1717, the institution of the Antient’s Grand Lodge in 1751 and the institution of the United Grand Lodge in 1813, are convenient reference points for a codification of the history of Masonry and the rituals that were being used from 1717 onwards. Presumably, there were rituals being used prior to 1717, and many of these have of course found their ways into the post 1717 era. As it turns out, based on the documentation alone, this talk will be focusing on things that have occurred since 1717.
From 1871 up until at least 1950, The Old Regulations of 1721 were published as an appendix to our Book of Constitutions in this Grand Lodge. If you read the Regulations carefully, you will notice that they were first compiled by Mr. George Payne in 1720, who was at that time the Grand Master, and they were approved by the Grand Lodge in 1721. At that time, the Grand Master was the Duke of Montegue. These general Regulations did not get around to being published until 1723 by Dr. Anderson, and when he published them he saw fit to add a postscript from 1723 itself when the Duke of Wharton was the Grand Master.
It is this postscript that is the basis of the rest of the paper. The postscript deals with the manner of instituting a new Lodge. It was clear to the Brethren of the Grand Lodge very early on in the game that, if they were to exert some control, they had to ensure that every Lodge that was brought into the Grand Lodge or came under its jurisdiction (which at the time really was only ten miles from the centre of London) had to be properly constituted and be put on the Register of the Grand Lodge. To do this, they had to have a specific ceremony of institution of a new Lodge, and that is what the appendix is. (LI refer to two separate parts of this ceremony, which in and of itself is only a few paragraphs long.
After the Grand Master has appointed the candidate to become the Master of the Lodge, the Grand Master has to then say the following words or words like them: No doubting of your capacity and care to preserve the cement of the Lodge..., etc. Then it goes on to say: with some other expressions that are proper and usual on the occasion, but not proper to be written. It is unknown whether or not there really were these proper and usual words in use before 1723, or if there had even been a similar ceremony.
The second quote comes from the next paragraph, where the Grand Master presents the Constitution of the Lodge Book and the Instruments of the Master’s Office to the Master, but he does not present them all together, rather he presents them singly and, to quote: After each of them the Grand Master or his Deputy shall rehearse the short and pithy charge that is suitable to the thing presented. This use of the word rehearse has its original meaning which can be traced back, for those who are really interested, to before 1300 where it meant to utter or express or repeat - or reiterate. By 1579, it started to mean to recite or go over. Any of these definitions would make sense of the word "rehearse" in this quote.
Thus, we have the beginnings of our present day installation service, specifically the act of installing an officer or the officers of the Lodge, in Open Lodge, with those symbols of the office’s authority along with a short charge to the office holder regarding his obligations for his ensuing term. You will also notice, when you read the ceremony carefully, that the majority of the ceremony is taken up with the act of what we would call Installing the Master and the Wardens, that is, the act of testing them, and giving them their powers and having everyone swear their allegiance, first to the Grand Lodge and then to the Master and the Wardens.
It is from this ceremony that our present Act of Installation comes, although not directly. When the Grand Lodge of Ireland was established a few years after the Grand Lodge of England, it took Anderson’s 1723 Regulations and Charges and incorporated them into their own work. This work was then brought back into England by the Antients who established their Grand Lodge in 1751. The Antients, who stated that they were adhering to the old system free from innovation were actually the great innovators.
The Moderns, or at least the bureaucracy at the Grand Lodge, was becoming very slow and sluggish, and the Antients forged ahead by instituting two important forms of democracy in the Lodge: first of all, they elected their officers on a yearly basis, and secondly, they instituted an annual ceremony of installation of the officers. This all proved to be very popular, and was gradually picked up by the Moderns.
At about the same time Masonry was exploding in England, there was a concurrent explosion of Exposures. These were completely unauthorized books that purported to give Masonic rituals to anyone who wished to buy them. These were very popular books, because Masons couldn't remember all the things they were required to remember as the lectures were long and cumbersome. In fact, of the two most famous Exposures, Three Distinct Knocks was favoured by the Antients while Jachin and Boaz was favoured by the Moderns. Both of these books had installation ceremonies appended.
The first really serious author who would be Masonically recognized was Preston; the first edition of his Illustrations was in 1772. In that book there are a variety of services which are almost identical to what is in our current Forms and Ceremonies, such as the Laying of the Masonic Cornerstone, the Masonic Funeral Service, etc. The Installation Service is now beginning to take shape as we would recognize it, although there were still some other major issues to be dealt with. In the early nineteenth century, in the process of the two Grand Lodges joining together, the Lodge of Reconciliation was established to agree on a framework for ritual common to and acceptable to all the parties at that time. The compromises that were made are fairly well known, but no actual ritual was ever written down. This was done on purpose, and the effect of this is that there are a wide variety of rituals being practised in England that have all equal standing and equal import.
However, one big problem still remained in the early 1800s: the question of installation. There were a couple of matters that needed to be resolved to ensure that there was one definitive ceremony that could be accepted by the Grand Lodge and by all the constituent Lodges. One of the issues that had arisen was the practice that only some Lodges had to have the new Master installed by a Board of Installed Masters. Some Lodges, such as in Bristol, had from the late 1700s established a ritual whereby the new Master and the Board of Installed Masters left the Lodge hall and went to an antechamber where the ritual was performed. In other Lodges, everyone but the Installed Masters vacated the Lodge hall and the ritual was performed in the Lodge. One of the reasons for the ritual being done this particular way was because there was a time when to enter the Royal Arch you had to be an Installed Master. There were also ceremonies to circumvent this, known as Passing the Chair, whereby a worthy Brother who was not a Master was, virtually, passed over the chair of the master and was therefore thought to be entitled to become a member of the Royal Arch.
Another reason for the exclusion of Brethren about the Lodge who were not Installed Masters was to make sure that the secrets required to be given only to a Master, be given only to people who are entitled to have them. This process of giving the secrets to the Master upon his installation has given rise in some commentators minds that becoming a Master of a Lodge is really the same as a Fourth Degree. There is some debate about this, which you can follow if you wish, but generally it presently accepted that the distinction between going from one Degree to another Degree is substantially different than from going from Senior Warden to Master of the Lodge. In any event, after the Lodge of Reconciliation was finished there were (and still remain) serious doctrinal splits inside the Craft as to whether or not the Duke of Sussex was leading it in the right direction (that is, the Craft being more inclusive and less exclusive). Some of these doctrinal problems were being politicized over the annual Installation Ceremony, which was radically different from one Lodge to another.
So much disquiet was raised that, in 1827, the Duke of Sussex, who was still the Grand Master, instituted a special Lodge or Board of Installed Masters which was established for the sole purpose of putting together an acceptable Installation Ceremony. This Board agreed on a definitive Installation Ceremony which was presented to the Grand Master, and he also agreed to this ritual. It is this ritual which is the basis for the ritual that we presently use in this jurisdiction. This ritual was agreed upon by the Grand Lodge of Ireland very soon thereafter, and accepted as a ritual in the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1872.
Last year I went to an Installation, and when the Brethren about the Lodge were asked to leave, I was with a Brother from Washington State who had never before been to a Canadian Installation. He was amazed that he was excluded from this part of the Installation because he thought that all Installations in Washington State were open, there was no reason for this exclusion to occur, and and that it was anti-democratic, etc. I looked into this, and discovered that, yes, there are many open Installations in Washington State and, regardless of whether the Installations are open or not, the process of installation, even if it is closed, does not require the Brethren about the Lodge to leave. This is because there is a separate Lodge that is held, district by district, for incoming or new Masters, at which time they are given the secrets and words of Installed Masters and are also taught certain parts of how to be a Master of a Lodge. Therefore, the actual process of separating the Installed Master’s information from those Brethren about the Lodge who are not Installed Masters may be different, but the end result is accomplished just the same.
In October 1871, when the Grand Lodge of Antient, Free and Accepted Masons of British Columbia was established, there were nine Lodges in the jurisdiction, four of which were under the registry of the United Grand Lodge of England and five of which were under the registry of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. In fact, one of the English Lodges, Union Lodge in New Westminster didn't join the Grand Lodge until the end of 1872. Therefore, at the time our Grand Lodge was instituted, there was a preponderance of Scottish registry Lodges in this jurisdiction. Not only that, many Brethren of the Scottish Lodges (or as they called themselves, Scotch Lodges) were adamantly opposed to any type of ritual that was based on English ritual. However, a process somewhat akin to the much more famous negotiations leading up to a Lodge of Reconciliation occurred in this province also, and our Grand Lodge was instituted on the premise that the ritual to be used would be as similar as possible to English and Scottish work, which would not be required to change, and in fact Lodges could be opened under these rituals as long as they came under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia. This notion of tolerance has remained the guiding light in this jurisdiction where you can now see four different allowed workings: that is, Canadian, Antient, Australian and Emulation, all with many variations. You can now also see the working of the Prince Hall Masons
While I am talking about rituals in this jurisdiction, I should inform you that at the front of the 1982 Forms and Ceremonies (our present text) there is a brief two page history of rituals in this Province. The history is quite telescoped and because of that it is not entirely accurate. I will presume that if you haven't read the preface you will, in due course, because I don't feel it appropriate that I repeat it at this juncture.
The Address to the Brethren occurs in our present Forms and Ceremonies (1982) four times: the first is the Institution of a Lodge Under Dispensation, the second is Constitution and Consecration of a New Lodge Including Installation of Its Officers, the third is Installation of the Officers of a Lodge According to the English or British Columbia Canadian Work, and the fourth is Installation of the Officers of a Lodge According to the British Columbia Antient Work.
In all four of these particular rituals, the talk is called the Address to the Brethren or the Address to the Brethren of the Lodge. At no point is it called the Charge to the Brethren, although it is called that quite often in Installation programmes. It is easy to see where this name came from: after all, the Address to the Brethren follows a Charge to the Master and a Charge to the Wardens. Also, the last printing of the Forms and Ceremonies before our present one, that is the 1972 version, called the two paragraphs in question, The Charge to the Brethren in the Ceremony for the Institution of a Lodge under Dispensation, with the specific requirement that, when this Charge was to be given, all the Brethren except the Master and the two Wardens were to be upstanding. In the 1982 version, the ritual is consistently called Address to the Brethren and there is no longer any reference to the Brethren being upstanding. I dont believe that it makes any difference what you call the speech, in terms of either form or substance.
By the way, in Ontario, that is the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario, the speech has been known as The General Charge since it was compiled in 1876. As a bit of a detour, I must tell you that the earliest Forms and Ceremonies in this jurisdiction that I could find was dated 1904, and that had the Installation service identical to the one that we use now, except that what we now call the Canadian work had no name on it at all and what we now call the Antient work was known as Scotch. The names gradually evolved into what they are now, although not all that consistently. For example, the word Scotch gradually became Scottish and then gradually became Antient, while at the same time the word Canadian was appended more often than not; however, in the 1910 Forms and Ceremonies, there was no reference at all to the Scotch version of the Installation, only the standard form version as it then must have been. I presume that this putting in and taking out of rituals and changing of names reflected a changing balance of authority on the various committees of Grand Lodge between the proponents of different rituals. Whether the nomenclature struggles will continue now, of course, is a matter of conjecture. I cannot leave this topic without reference to the 1904 Forms and Ceremonies. I have found no reference to this publication in any Grand Lodge proceedings. Regardless of what ritual is practised by the Lodge, it is up to each Lodge to determine if they wish to use the long form (Canadian) or short form (Antient) Installation Ceremony. The only significant difference is the Address to the Brethren.
I had assumed because the Canadian version had found what appeared to be universal favour in the Vancouver Lower Mainland that it was accepted throughout the province. I was disabused quite strongly of this notion by V.W. Bro. Jack Bottomley of United Service Lodge No. 24 (Langford) on Vancouver Island, who had come to hear this talk when I first gave it. He made it clear that on the Island, where the members of both districts like to go to each other’s Installations, because of the distances travelled and the late nights it was rare to find anyone doing the long version. I know this is also the practise in Ontario, where the general instructions are that: if the evening is going too long, shorten the General Charge.
This piece of ritual is quite theatrical in its nature. The Address to the Brethren is given after a long evening, after the Brethren about the Lodge have removed themselves from the Lodge while the Lodge of Installed Masters takes over, and the Brethren have returned and done their perambulations, and each and all of the officers have been installed with their jewels, and all the Charges have been made to the officers, etc., and then at last we get this prodigious piece of memory work.
It is often done by a member of the Board of Installed Masters, and someone who is respected in the District and someone who is a good orator. Sometimes it is given with the orator standing in the East in front of the Master and simply addressing the Lodge directly. In other Lodges, it is done where the orator starts in the northwest corner and gives the speech while walking (once) around the Lodge room, and sometimes the orator will stop, rather than at just the four corners of the Lodge, at various parts of the Address to illustrate, by motions and examples, various parts of the Address. In some Lodges, there are two Brethren giving the Address: one standing in the northwest and one standing in the southeast. In some Lodges, this is given by alternating paragraphs; in other Lodges, it’s done primarily by one speaker with a number of the paragraphs done by the other speaker. The variations are unique and important to each Lodge or District.
As to where this long address came from and how it got to be in British Columbia, the first is easily described and the second is a bit of a mystery, although I do have a theory. The Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario decided in the 1870s to regularize various pieces of its ritual. This was done by M.W. Bro. Otto Klotz. Our Grand Lodge library happens to possess a rather rare first edition of Ceremonies 1876 including the Installation rituals with amendments on page 14 in Klotz’s handwriting.
For reasons which are not entirely clear to me, Klotz put together this whole Installation in the Second Degree. This obviously was changed in our jurisdiction to the Third Degree, and has remained that way ever since. The information that I will be giving regarding this speech comes from the book Whence Come We, a compendium of Freemasonry in Ontario from 1764 to 1980, published in 1980, specifically Chapter 13, Other Craft Ceremonies, and more specifically pages 204 and 205. I am informed by V.W. Bro. Wallace McLeod that the author of this particular section of the book was M.W. William Kirk Bailey.
For those who are interested in Otto Klotz, and he really is, from my perspective, a Masonic hero, there is also a section on him in this book, commencing on page 112 to page 116. Something that is not mentioned in those pages is a common story about Klotz, that, because of his heavy German accent, he never wanted to take on the job of Grand Master and was made an Honourary Grand Master in 1885. In any event, I will be using the historical references regarding the original English versions of the Charge to the Brethren as contained in the section from Whence Come We. Having said that, I beg to differ with the text, only in so far as one sentence goes, and that is as follows: The ten little paragraphs are peculiarly Canadian and are found only in our Grand Lodge and those Grand Lodges which sprang from us and adopted our ritual. I believe this is grammatically incorrect: it seems to me to be more correct that the final words should be or adopted our ritual. As I have just discussed, the Grand Lodge of British Columbia had no relationship at all to the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario, and it certainly could never be described to have sprung from that Grand Lodge.
As to how this ritual was adopted by our Grand Lodge, this is a bit of a mystery. The closest I can come is a reference to page 10 in the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of 1895 in regards to an Emergent Meeting in Vancouver on November 22, 1894, at which time the Grand Lodge adopted a variety of resolutions that actually had taken a few years to work their way through the system. They added a new motion that The Charges, Antient Landmarks and Forms as found in the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of Manitoba (subject to any necessary alterations) be included. The inclusion was to the Constitution and Forms that had been adopted basically from Manitoba. I am unable to establish, at the present time, whether or not the Ontario version was adopted by Manitoba, but I presume it was.
What is really interesting about this is that, in 1893, the amendments that were made by M.W. Bro. Klotz were taken out of the accepted Ontario ritual and were not accepted back in until 1910. What Otto Klotz did was to combine a version of the existing Installation Address to the Brethren, dating back at that time approximately a hundred years, and add to it what were then contemporary quotes regarding Freemasonry in the Province of Ontario, that is from the 1860s to the 1870s. And by doing that, what he did was tie together a number of the important ideals of Freemasonry. The issues in this Address to the Brethren involve the governance of the Lodge, the advantage of being in the Lodge if it has proper governance, and what benefits can be seen from being a member of the Lodge and just from being a Mason.
When one reads about the Installation Ceremony, typically what is not mentioned is the first and most important issue that must be taken care of: that is that, before the Master Elect can start along the process, the Brethren about the Lodge must reconfirm their ballot to have this individual be the Worshipful Master for the next year. The first thing that happens to the Worshipful Master Elect when he is called before the existing Worshipful Master, is he told that the main reason he is there is that he was elected by the Brethren about the Lodge. After the Board of Installed Masters has done with the Worshipful Master as he then becomes, and after the perambulations and the Working Tools have been presented to him, the first thing he hears in the Charge to the Worshipful Master is that he has been elected to govern the Lodge for one year.
The seat of power in the Lodge is always the democracy of all the Brethren about the Lodge, and every year they exercise this and give up governance, on a temporary basis, to individuals whom they feel are worthy. But to be worthy of his job, the Worshipful Master must make sure that the Lodge performs a certain way, i.e., produces the results that the Lodge is designed to produce. We can see in the eighteenth century it was happiness, in the nineteenth century it became more specific in terms of the general comportment inside the Lodge and also of course the general notion of what a Mason can be and ought to be.
Before I go into this on a paragraph by paragraph basis, there is one point that I must deal with, and that has to do with attribution to authorship. As I have mentioned, I will be using the references that Kirk Bailey used in Whence Come We, even though I am aware that questions have arisen regarding the authorship of some of these sections of the English lectures. This has been discussed recently by Terence Haunch in The Origin of Installation Addresses. His point is that the writers, whom he called Masonic philosophers, were really all part and parcel of the same society and they were all giving the same message. I would like to expand on that slightly, because, whether Preston actually wrote it or heard it or whether someone else wrote it or heard it first, is not important: it seems to me what is most important is that they were able to crystallize a message that was clear and acceptable to the Brethren about the Lodge. The value of this message continued. It is this idea of continuity of the purity of the purpose of this language and the principles contained therein that is the basis of the traditional value of hearing this Address to the Brethren on a yearly basis. Some connective sinew of morality, or logic, or emotion ties us directly to those individuals who heard this for the first time in the 1780s, or the 1870s. The vitality of the message of Masonry won't be diminished just because of its age.
Paragraph 1:
This is referred to as being from Preston’s Illustrations of Masonry of 1775, and deals with the immediate problem facing the Brethren about the Lodge, that is, in a pure democracy, why do you have to have leaders, and why do you give up power to leaders even on an annual basis? The answer is that you do so because this will lead you to fulfill the grand design of being happy and communicating happiness.
Paragraph 2:
This comes from the Introductory Address to the First Lecture and can be traced back to Brown’s Mason Master Key of 1798 wherein it was believed to have been compiled by Preston. This paragraph deals with the scope of what Freemasonry deals with on a philosophical basis, in terms of art and science.
Paragraph 3:
This comes from the Address by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Canada, as it then was, William Mercer Wilson, on July 11, 1860. [Wilson was quoting the Rev. Erastus Burr.] This was the fifth meeting of this Grand Lodge, and the history of those five years are full of problems, roadblocks and successes that are almost biblical in stature, but by the time that the Grand Master gave this Address, which was to be his last as Grand Master, he had overcome everything from only being recognized by one other Grand Lodge, to having two different Grand Lodges in his jurisdiction, to having an interminable colonial fight with the United Grand Lodge of England, until at last everything was successfully resolved. In that context, there is a certain triumphant poignancy about this paragraph, because it deals with the value the Order gives to Freemasons and the duties and obligations that Freemasons owe the Order.
Paragraphs 4 and 5:
These come from an Address given originally by Otto Klotz on December 26, 1864, to a Ladies Night held at Alma Lodge No. 72 in Galt, of which he was the Master. Klotz included these two paragraphs because they are a perfect representation, to an outsider, as to what is supposed to happen inside the Lodge. Not only is that important to an outsider to know but, of course, it is important for Masons to know what standard a Lodge is to be measured against, and, of course, the ultimate value of being a member of a Lodge that works properly, which is again to be happy ourselves and to communicate that happiness to others.
Paragraphs 6 through 11:
These are quite remarkable for a number of reasons. They were written by Otto Klotz at the end of an article that was published on March 15, 1868, entitled "The History of Freemasonry" in The Canadian Craftsman. These paragraphs outline, at long last, the ideal of what a Freemason is. This is the crucial point that goes beyond the grand design of being happy and communicating happiness, but actually indicates all of those ways you can tell a man who is doing the act of communicating happiness. The most remarkable part of this is that this was not written to be read aloud, although it works perfectly well in that format.
Paragraph 12, which is attributed to Preston’s Illuminations:
This deals with the value for Freemasons now, and for those to follow, of building on and continuing with the ideals of Freemasonry. Before I get to that, I will read to you a quote from an article entitled "In Love with Chiseled Features" which appeared in The Globe and Mail, October 6, 1998, on page A2. The article is about a real stonemason, that is an operative mason, named Joshua Johnson, who was working for Robert John Watt Stonemasons on refurbishing the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.
"Good masons have a real sense of belonging to a much larger time-space than the one they breathe in while they're living," said Robert Watt, who is Mr. Johnston’s employer and a master mason. "Good masons think along that line: that they're not doing this particularly for them or for the people that surround them at the moment.... They're doing it for the dozens of generations that are coming along behind them, and will look at the work, and marvel at it."
With this transcendent quote that deals with the reason for continuity and the reason for concern about what it is we leave behind, it is appropriate to end back at Preston from 1775.
In conclusion, we are lucky to use in this jurisdiction a ritual that appears to be a seamless web but in fact was stitched together from various component parts, all of which are still relevant today, written in different centuries on different continents. When I originally embarked upon this research, I was concerned that my initial enthusiasm for the impact and magic of the Address would wane when I knew more of the details but in fact it has been enhanced by the work that I have done, and I trust that my research will be of benefit to the Brethren about the Lodge.

OCTOBER 17, 1998
This is a variation of a talk that I originally gave at my lodge, Centennial-King George Lodge No. 171, on December 2, 1997. I have given the same talk, or at least a version of it, two other times since then, to Vancouver Lodge No. 68 and to Mount Hermon Lodge No. 7, and in both of those times I was fortunate to have the able assistance of R.W. Bro. Danny Iaccabucci who gave the Address to the Brethren when I got to that part of the speech. I would like to particularly thank Danny because the way that the speech is set up, the Address has to be broken down on a paragraph by paragraph basis when it is presented and this is certainly not the way that it is memorized or done at lodge installations.
I mention this because if anyone wishes to present this paper, please feel free; however, having done it with and without an orator, it is a much better presentation for the brethren about the lodge if there is actually someone there to give the Address to the Brethren.
I wish to thank W. Bro. Trevor W. McKeown and two individuals in Ontario for their help with the research. I was in Hamilton, Ontario this past summer, and went to the library at the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario; I was helped by W. Bro. Bob Todd and subsequently I wrote to V.W. Bro. Wallace McLeod, the Grand Historian of the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario, and he provided me with further information by way of a letter just last week.

Selected readings:
"Andersons Constitutions as Source Books of Masonic History." by A.R. Hewitt, AQC79 (1966) p.1
"The Development of Installation at Bristol." by Eric Ward, AQC 81 (1959) p.85
"It is not in the power of any man ... A Study in Change." by Terence Haunch, AQC85 (1972).
"The Lectures of English Craft Freemasonry" by P.R. James, AQC 79 (1966) p.140
"The Old Charges" by Wallace McLeod, AQC 99 (1986) p.120.
"Open and Closed Installations in the U.S.A." by Alex Horne, AQC 83 (1970) p.65
"The Origins of the Installation Addresses." by Terence Haunch, AQC 101 (1988) p.201
"The Vocabulary of the Ceremonies." by Sir Lionel Brett, AQC 101 (1988) p.1.

The word Emulation is really a misnomer. In England and various parts of the world, it denotes the ritual practised by the Emulation Lodges, whereas in this jurisdiction it denotes the rituals done by a variety of different Lodges, some of which do remarkably different work, one from the other, but, because they can all be traced back to various English rituals, are collectively known as Emulation.
copyright Mark S. Dwor, Vancouver 1998


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