Runaways found shelter at Cool Aid
Idea for society hatched in early 1967 with installation of help line at Amelia Street house
While San Francisco was the epicentre of what’s become known as the Summer of Love, even buttoned-down Victoria got in on the hippie action that year, with a series of happenings at Beacon Hill Park, Bastion Square and Centennial Square.
On Saturday we ran a series of reader recollections from that year. Following are two more memories from that time, including one that gave birth to one of Victoria’s institutions, the Cool Aid Society
In the fall of 1965 I was news editor of the Martlet student newspaper at the University of Victoria. I was approached by several students from Victoria High School who wanted to form a peace club at their school, but they had been denied. I helped them form an anti-war organization outside of school. Political organizing, public meetings and demonstrations were prime activities.
In 1966, a new federal government community organizing initiative called the Company of Young Canadians began. I became a volunteer, received training in Nova Scotia and returned in August of 1966 to help organize the Victoria Project. The fledgling youth group expanded and started a “free university” at 1054 McGregor, which lasted a few months before collapsing.
The group decided to re-organize. Over Christmas, several youth from the project travelled by train to Waterloo, Ont., to attend a major student peace conference. When they returned, the Victoria Youth Council was formed. The goal was to “give youth an effective and potent voice in public affairs, to give them power to shape the quality and direction of their own lives and to give them the resources they need to develop their full potential as free individuals.”
Over the next few years the focus was on music, empowerment, mutual assistance, public events, inclusive decision-making and direct youth services. Lots of energy was devoted to creating a wide range of alternative publications, confronting the established order and making weird movies and plays — youth things!
In 1967 many cultural and music events were organized and this was the heart and soul of the project. “Happenings” occurred every Friday night at Bastion Square and several larger events were organized at Beacon Hill Park. They were organized without permission and finally the parks administrator issued a set of rules that would need to be adhered to at any future rock and roll events. The Youth Council decided not to comply.
This proved to be an important confrontation that was eventually solved by the mayor, who overturned the ruling and also attended the next event at Beacon Hill. The inter-generational conflict of the time can be illustrated by the fact that the park administrator was on one side of this battle and his children were on the other as part of the Victoria Youth Council. This was indeed the “Summer of Love.” Music was free, shelter was free, drugs were free and people supported each other in whatever ways they could.
In early 1967, we occupied a house on Wark Street and then 1527 Amelia St., which is the birthplace of the idea to start a service called Cool Aid that would help transient and runaway youth. This was formalized later as the Victoria Cool Aid Society. We started with about $8 to install a phone in our living room, which acted as a help line. The Cool Aid phone number was 383-1951, which remains the same today.
The decision to start Cool Aid formally was made the next year by the Victoria Youth Council at the meeting of June 9, and Cool Aid began the next day. The decision was made by the usual consensus after one dissenting vote, which was withdrawn in order to reach agreement. It was typical of the Youth Council to implement decisions immediately. At a later date, Cool Aid moved to the church building in Fernwood where the Belfry Theatre is today. As I remember, the total cost was $57,000 facilitated by supportive adults.
Cool Aid was just one of the projects created and operated by the Victoria Youth Council. At the same time, the main project underway was the Broad Street Centre. It served youth and had a unique youth-only governance structure, served up to 300 kids at a time and paid big rent ($175 plus utilities)! It was a place for advocacy support and loud music. It was occasionally mentioned in youth court during “delinquency” and parent-child conflict cases.
The council was also organizing a major project called “Youth Week,” which ran from Aug. 17 to 25. It involved 34 guest speakers from across Canada and the U.S. with topics such as “Freedom and Authority,” “Youth in North America,” “The Family” and “Social Change.” There was music most nights.
Special events featured an evening with three members of the Black Panther Party, another with Toronto hippie leader David Depoe and the infamous Robert Baird Memorial Whip Festival sanctioned by city hall. This festival began as a reaction to a Victoria alderman suggesting that hippies should be whipped out of Centennial Square. The event was, of course, held in Centennial Square.
Lynn Curtis, Duncan
It was 4 p.m. on a sunny Saturday afternoon when the ’55 Ford Crown Victoria rolled off the ferry at Tsawwassen. This was the start of a road trip that would provide a lifetime of memories, a bumpy passage into manhood and awareness, and most importantly, some new upholstery for the Ford.
Ed and I were on our way to Mexico for the ultimate Tijuana upholstery experience. Ed was almost finished bringing his car up to selling condition.
“Curbing” cars and working at various gas stations after school was more than just a way for us to make money, it was a lifestyle, some might say a passion. We were always on the hunt for a deal, a bargain, a diamond in the rough that we could polish up and sell for a profit.
Each of us has continued that search to this day; 50 years later, it’s a part of our DNA and no longer about the money.
The 1960s were interesting times. The “boomers” had found their freedom when we picked up our driver’s licences. We could fix whatever stood in our way. The only thing that could stop us was to run out of gas.
Our journey seemed easy enough, just turn onto Interstate 5 and the next stop … Tijuana.
The trip down the Interstate 5 freeway was for the most part uneventful. One of us would drive while the other slept in the back seat or slumped over against the passenger door. It was hours of boredom filled with moments of sheer terror, for every once in a while a semitrailer or other very large rig would pass us going at what seemed like an impossible speed.
After the adrenalin subsided, calmness would return. We crossed the border into Tijuana at 8 a.m. on Monday and were greeted not by a border patrol agent, but by an upholstery salesman who popped out of nowhere with a set of teeth that I swear he must have made himself out of some old plastic or wood.
There were no border patrol agents that we could see, but we had arrived at our destination.
We alternated between staying with the car at the upholstery shop and sightseeing around the town. It seemed like the entire area smelled to high heaven. At times it was hard to breathe.
There did not appear to be an age limit to enter the bars, so when it was my turn to wander, I went in search of the famous El Burro bar, where, as legend has it, a donkey was one of the stage performers. I never found the donkey or the bar, but it was fun looking for both.
On the trip home, we started off by taking the coast road back and somewhere north of San Diego we stopped and picked up a couple of hitchhikers who looked as if they came from a prep school in New England. Turns out they were from New York and headed for Haight Ashbury in San Francisco.
The area referred to as Haight Ashbury is nothing more than an intersection of two streets, Haight and Ashbury. Hunter S. Thompson referred to the neighbourhood as “Hashbury” in the New York Times. The area had become run down in the early ’60s as there was a freeway planned to be built there but it never materialized. The low rents and vacant lots attracted “hippies” from across the continent. Our two friends came here for the “speed, weed and LSD” and to live among likeminded souls.
We parked the Ford with its fresh upholstery job glowing in the sun on the side of the street. There were hundreds if not thousands of “flower children” everywhere.
Our two new friends were sweating with excitement. They were obviously overdressed for the occasion. They pulled their shirts out of their pants as we all walked down the street toward the crowds and started tearing the lower portion of their shirts into strips while they walked. They wanted to fit in.
They wanted to be part of the happening. There was music everywhere. They walked into the hoard of people and we never saw them again.
Buena Vista Park lay adjacent to the area and was an ideal location to set up camp in the parking lot, where we stayed for a couple of nights. People lived, slept, sang and danced in various stages of undress in the park or anywhere else they could find to gather.
The world changed that summer. The war in Vietnam was taking its toll on an entire generation. The youth of a nation started to build a sense of awareness that their parents had overlooked and had trouble understanding at first. This awareness began at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in the summer of ’67.
We were out of cash and running low on emergency provisions that we had taken from our mothers’ pantries a week earlier. It was time to head north again, topping up other folks’ gas tanks on the Texaco card in exchange for cash. On the eighth day, we returned to Tsawwassen to board the ferry: Mission accomplished; memories remembered; 50 years and counting.
We continue to reside in our hometown of Victoria, and each still own and operate businesses there.