Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario 1927 Recognition Standards

In 1927 M.W. Bro. William Nisbet Ponton reported, on behalf of the Committee

on Fraternal Relations (the Fraternal Correspondence) the criteria by which

regularity should be assessed:

Your Committee recommends that, for the purpose of establishing a standard,

the basic requirements essential to recognition of any Foreign Grand Lodge

be declared to be:

1. That such Grand body has been regularly and validly constituted as an

   independent and sovereign Grand Lodge.

2. That its purposes are fraternal and charitable, seeking the advancement

   of the indivitual and the community, to the exclusion of political

   and sectarian activities, propaganda, and controversy.

3. Acknowledgement of a belief in God, the Supreme Being.

4. The open volume of the Sacred Law, indispensibly present in the lodges,

   while at work.

5. That it makes Masons of men only.

6. The substantial division of symbolic Masonry into three degrees,

   as established and practiced in this Grand Lodge.

7. That it occupies exclusively territorial jurisdiction or shares the same

   with another by mutual consent, and that it does not presume to extend

   its authority into, or presume to establish lodges in a territory

   occupied by a lawful Grand Lodge, without the expressed assent of such

   supreme governing Masonic body.

   "Whence Come We?" p.241