Topic spans: 1964 - 2006
Hippie Society: The Youth Rebellion
Flowers and free love. Antiwar marches and acid tests. In the mid to late 1960s, youth across North America and Europe began to "turn on, tune in and drop out." Fed up with the establishment — parents, schools, police — they went looking for a new way of life. To Toronto's Yorkville and Vancouver's Kitsilano district they came, preaching peace, love and non-conformity.
14 television clips
8 radio clips
City politicians averse to hippies
Broadcast Date: March 18, 1968
Just as the hippies in Yorkville want a place to call their own, so do the hippies of Vancouver. First, they try sitting outside the Hudson's Bay building, but they're forced off the sidewalk by police who claim they're obstructing commercial business. Next, they try the public square in front of the Vancouver courthouse. This time they're arrested. In this CBC Television clip, Vancouver Mayor Tom Campbell defends the move.The hippies are upset. They've been arrested for assembling in a public space. As far as they're concerned, their civil liberties are being restricted. Their arrests have been arranged under a special city rule which was originally aimed at ridding the city of vagrants. Now it's being used to rid the city of hippies. They feel they're being discriminated against because of their appearance. Mayor Tom Campbell is unrepentant, saying hippies will destroy Canada.
City politicians averse to hippies
• The final shot of this CBC program prompted 200 angry protest calls to the local CBC station and led to one of the producers being taken off the show and "assigned to other programs."• One of the hippies arrested was Stan Persky, who came to Vancouver in 1966 after serving in the U.S. Navy. He co-founded the "Georgia Straight Writing Supplement," wrote several leftist political books and in 2003 was working as a literary critic and philosophy teacher at Capilano College in Vancouver.
• Vancouver was not the only city to have problems with the hippies. In the early summer of 1968, shaken by reports that 50,000 hippies would be descending on the city, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau declared war on the hippies. Hippies accused the mayor of illegally harassing and jailing non-conformists. Hippie haunts were raided. Soup kitchen permits were rejected. And obscenity charges were laid against the hippies' underground newspaper, Logos.
City politicians averse to hippies
Medium: Television
Program: 7 O'Clock Show
Broadcast Date: March 18, 1968
Guest(s): Tom Campbell
Host: Bob Quintrell
Reporter: Doug Collins
Duration: 6:48
Last updated:
Aug. 14, 2003
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hippie · Yorkville · flower children · 1960s
City politicians averse to hippies.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: Aug. 14, 2003.
[Page consulted on Nov. 21, 2009.]