October 1, 1988 

WHY DOES ALBERTA MASONRY HAVE TWO RITES? 
by Bro.  J.H. Laycraft PGR

Recently I attended a sister lodge, which practices the Ancient
York Rite, on the occasion of the initiation of a young friend
into the Craft. After congratulating the new Mason I said: "Now
you must visit my lodge.  It is a Canadian Rite Lodge and you
will see that the lessons of Masonry are presented much
differently there." And so the young Mason learned to his
surprise that there are two markedly different rites of
Freemasonry in Alberta and that there are, in fact, many
variations of those rites in North America in jurisdictions
recognized by his own Grand Lodge.  "How," he asked, "did these
differences come about" (1)

The answer to his question takes us through a fascinating period
of Masonry.  We must journey back in history nearly 250 years to
the time of a great division between Masons, the quarrel between
the "Antients" and the "Moderns." We must then trace the spread
of Freemasonry from the old world to the new and thence across
the United States into Canada and across the western plains to
Alberta.

The first step in our journey is to review the great quarrel in
English Freemasonry. For sixty-two years, from 1751 until 1813,
England had two rival Grand Lodges living in bitter enmity.  Each
regarded the other as clandestine. Bernard E. Jones, in his
superb text, "Freemasons' Guide and Compendium" (2) describes
this period of history as being "disfigured by a long and violent
quarrel."(3) Masonry was in turmoil for more than half a century. 
Indeed, from our present perspective, one wonders that it
survived.  Particularly in North America, the battle between the
"Antients" and the "Moderns" continues, even today, to influence
the Craft.  It is certainly responsible for most of the
differences between the rituals of various North American
jurisdictions.  Even we Albertans, with a Masonic history
extending barely beyond a century, may trace our difference in
ritual to this old dispute.

First we require some definitions. References throughout Masonry
to the "Moderns" refer to the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the
first Grand Lodge in the world.  The members of the rival Grand
Lodge, whose brief but dramatic life I shall recount in this
paper, referred to themselves as "Antients" because they believed
they practiced a more ancient, and therefore a purer, form of
Freemasonry.  So we will not confuse these two bodies, we may
remember that in terms of the time of origin, the "Antients" was
the newer group and the "Moderns" the original group.

The Grand Lodge of the "Antients" existed, at least in committee
form, from 1739 but came into formal being in 1751.  The terms
"Antients" and "Moderns" were probably first used as epithets,
says Bernard Jones, but the names stuck and were soon adopted as
their own by the combatants.  We must be careful to note,
however, that the names were often misleading in describing the
Masonic rituals actually practised.

Bernard Jones