Lord’s Day Alliance

The Lord’s Day Alliance was a group formed in 1888 to secure laws to uphold what it called “the English Sunday.” Its Sabbatarian focus became a pressing concern for evangelical Christianity when decisions by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1903 and 1905 nullified Sunday laws in Ontario. The Alliance succeeded in its main aim with the passage of the federal Lord’s Day Act in 1906, and subsequently devoted its efforts to ensuring the enforcement of the law by local police. In Toronto, for instance, charges under the act constituted the largest group of offences reported in the years before the First World War.