Hippie life: It ain't easy
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.
- the communalist, who preaches togetherness and co-operation and often sets up communes;
- the religionist, who strives to expand the mind and is often committed to Eastern religions such as Buddhism;
- the hedonist, who advocates free love;
- the protester, who is more concerned with political goals.
• On Aug. 22, 1967, the Toronto Daily Star provided "A Square's Guide to the Language of Yorkville":
acid: LSD;
bread: money;
blow your mind: to shock or delight;
freak: beyond the norm, good or bad;
go down: to occur;
head: a person who turns on through the use of "pot" or "acid";
heavy: serious;
horseman: Mountie;
The Man: policeman;
narc: narcotics agent;
strung out: mentally and physically exhausted;
turn on: to get high on drugs;
wasted: highly relaxed euphoria.
Program: The Enterprise
Medium: Television
Program: The Enterprise
Broadcast Date: Nov. 29, 1967
Duration: 6:41
Last updated: August 27, 2013
Page consulted on November 27, 2014
All Clips from this Topic
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A peek at Canada's first "Happening," a Dada-inspired night of beatnik...
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Hippies get all decked out and pumped up for the party in Vancouver's ...
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A group of hippies holds a 'chair-in' at Toronto City Council.
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(no audio at beginning) Toronto police use force to break up a hippie ...
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CBC radio reports on the reaction to the use of police force at the Au...
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Toronto's Yorkville. It's hippie central, full of young kids, drugs, s...
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On-the-street interviews with hippie runaways and the people trying to...
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A hippie in Kitsilano talks about getting by, meditating, doing drugs ...
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Vancouver's mayor defends the recent arrest of several youths caught l...
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Canadian filmmaker Don Shebib journeys to the epicentre of the hippie ...
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The head of a California commune argues that hippies represent the lif...
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A young 'hippie girl' candidly describes her experience with a police ...
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Cops talk about hippies.
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The view from inside Canada's first free university and largest co-ope...
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Three hippies describe why they've started new lives on communal farms...
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Some aged hippies, slightly older and wiser, talk about the failure of...
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Are the hippies losing Yorkville to the boutiques and condominiums?
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CBC's Bill Harrington reports on the 'drug-oriented' Yorkville lifesty...
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A news report on the hippie-filled 'Strawberry Fields' music festival.
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A look back at the failure and legacy of Rochdale.