Transient youths take on the police
Battle of Jericho saw dozens evicted from temporary `hut hostel'
The big news across Canada 50 years ago was prime minister Pierre Trudeau invoking the War Measures Act to deal with the FLQ crisis in Quebec.
But Vancouver had its own troubles, when the eviction of dozens of youths from a temporary hostel sparked the Battle of Jericho.
“The 1970 Battle of Jericho started Thursday at two minutes to 2 p.m.,” said a “chronology of confrontation” in the Oct. 16, 1970, Vancouver Sun.
“When it was over, 200 young transients had been cleared, not only from their hut hostel on the Jericho armed forces base, but from the Point Grey area.”
The “hut hostel” was Building 47 in an old military base at Jericho. The youths had been housed in the Beatty Street Armory downtown over the summer, but faced eviction in mid- September. The federal government then offered a new, temporary location at Jericho in an old barracks. On Sept. 12, Paul Manning of the Province reported the youths were happy with the switch “from the Beatty street hovel to the Jericho Hilton.”
“There's more privacy (at Jericho),” said John Warner, 21, who had recently arrived in town from Montreal, and hoped to get a job up north. “It's like home with the different rooms. But you do feel a little compressed with the army all around you.”
There were still some military families living at Jericho at the time, and they were not impressed with the longhairs.
“I'm getting my husband to have our family transferred to Sea Island,” an “army mother” told Manning. “Providing rooms for trav
elling students is one thing, but these people aren't going to school — they're just hangers-on.”
When Manning asked if she had met any of the youths, she said she hadn't, and didn't want to.
“If any of those people come around my family, I'll use my shotgun,” she said.
On Sept. 16, the feds announced the youths would be out within 20 days, which Vancouver's hippie-hating mayor Tom Campbell said was “19 days too long. It should never have happened in the first place. The federal government should not supply hippie pads in Vancouver.”
No action was taken by the deadline on Oct. 2, but the next day a coalition of federal and provincial agencies said they hoped to have the hostel dwellers out within a week by relocating them.
On Oct. 9, however, Ald. Walter Hardwick charged that leaders of the Jericho transients were deliberately not telling their followers
of alternative accommodation that was available. “The simple fact is the management group of these young people don't want Jericho to close,” he told The Sun. “For some if it closes, their livelihood goes. Others of the far left are looking for a political confrontation.”
Finally on Oct. 15, the day before the War Measures Act was declared, eight military policemen handed out eviction notices at 2 p.m. Anticipating trouble, 150 RCMP officers arrived on three chartered buses.
“In small groups, they marched through both floors of the building, pushing the occupants before them,” The Sun reported.
“More than 100 youths were moved out in this stage of the operation, leaving a group of about 30 barricaded in a section of the second floor.”
Some of the evicted moved up to Fourth Avenue and blocked the street. Vancouver motorcycle police arrived to try to clear
Fourth Avenue, then the riot squad showed up.
“At 5:15, the first riot unit of 16 men moved in two lines across the width of the roadway, three-foot riot sticks held across their chests with both hands,” said The Sun. “There was a flurry of blows from the sticks and kicks at those sitting down. From the crowd came screams and a barrage of rocks, bottles and cans.”
The police advanced up the hill toward Jericho Hill school, “dodging as best they could a barrage of rocks coming at them.” After driving the youth onto Eighth Avenue, motorcycle cops “driving in a flying wedge along Eighth (moved along) any stragglers who had not moved out of the area together.”
The Battle of Jericho hill was over. Building 47 is now the Jericho Hostel at 1515 Discovery St. As part of Vancouver's new $30-million COVID-19 housing plan, it will be converted into a homeless shelter.