City
Rochdale College Revisited
Most Torontonians in their forties and up remember the social experiment that was Rochdale College, they might even have a good story to tell, but to those too young or new to the city it's just another concrete monolith. The eighteen-story-high brutalist structure at St. George and Bloor was the subject of Ron Mann's story, Dream Tower, in the recent Planet in Focus Film and Video Festival, and is also the result of a group of idealistic students in the late sixties who hoped to challenge reigning educational models.
They believed that students should have more control over curriculum, design and teach their own courses, as well as run the administration. Young people rallied behind the idea and its popularity grew, but space became a concern. There had been no central location for the school, so the feds gave them seed money - 5 million dollars - for the construction of a building for the college which would include a residence. The Rochdale dream was becoming a reality.
The design by architects Tampold and Wells was unique, accommodating for communal living and areas that were known as ashrams, each unit of which was independent and responsible for its own welfare. The free college accepted many kinds of people into the fray from hippies and homeless to drug-dealers and draft-dodgers, however the lack of regulation and direction resulted in chaos. Rochdale's student body soon couldn't reach consensus on anything, like what to do about their open door policy, and the school quickly became a haven for biker gangs, dealers and their clientele. Cops' visits then became so frequent some students would welcome them with freshly baked cakes.
Seven years later, in 1975, the Rochdale dream lost steam. Political pressure led to the school's closure. Police carried the last of the students out and welded the doors shut. Today a monument called the Unknown Student rests outside the building, now named the Senator David A. Croll Apartments. Not all of Rochdale's creativity went up in smoke however, the Rochdale movement helped propel the creative minds behind Toronto cultural institutions Coach House Press, House of Anansi Press and Theatre Passe Muraille.
(Image = mechrisman)
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The doc itself was lacking a bit in some ways (editing, sound, etc.) but it made up for this with its amazing collection of stock footage use from the era. I loved seeing the streets of Yorkdale in the late 1960's full of spaced out Toronto Hippy kids testing the waters of this new found lifestyle and cultural/sexual/political revolution going on around them. My favourtie moment was seeing a young Adrienne Clarkson as a CBC reporter speaking with kids at Rochdale!
Thanks for reporting on this Sookie.
lived in ROCHDALE 4 1 yr apt 1524
remember that pie in sky at 5 o'clock
Lived with french girl DENISE her pic
was or is painted the in lobby.What happened to SID STERN?
SOMEBODY GET BACT TO ME!!!!!!!!!
I lived with Mila Hoskova. There were 4 of us in that apartment. Sharon and Linda were the other two girls. Lost touch many many years ago. I hope you see this, since it's now 2009!
Grieveson, Brian J. is so far the best work done on Rochdale.
Sid Stern who was a close personal friend of mine. He did indeed die but it was in Toronto shortly after seeing his youngest daughter Tracy married a few days before. I was in a Bangkok telephone booth when I recieved the news that he had died peacefully in his sleep after a night of whoopee. His age at the time was, I believe, 74. The person who told me the news was Bill Litler who had been Rochdale's chief of security for a few years.
Though I went on to recieve two batchelor's from York University I have always valued the education and degree from Rochdale far more than the other two.
Rochdale was a bold experiment that went awry for a few years. The pity is that just as we had solved many of our problems and were beginning to colaesce as a new type of community is when the government stepped in and shut the experiment down.It's always been my personal belief that this was done mostly because they saw us starting to make a bid for political power when we helped defeat two longtime Spadina riding Machine politicos and helped elect two much more progressive politicans in Ald. Dan Heap and Ald. Allan Sparrow.
I hope that someone will soon set out to write a definitive work on Rochdale as most of us are now in our 60's and beginning to take the long voyage to the Other Side.
Later I lived with Ian Anderson (not Tull) He played on the "Roaches" I used to know all the names but it seems so long ago.
The thing that got me started on thes search was the news yesterday morning RE: Joseph Burgess alis at the Roch Joe Burke)
He was shoot I didn't hear much more except he was wanted for murder in BC. Blew my mind cause I went out to BC with him in the spring of '72. I knew he was weird but WOW. I don't know why I'm tell you all this crap except I'm so weirded out.
I'm glad Sid Stern is dead. He was a sleazy criminal, far too old to live with hippies. "Don't trust anyone over 30." He ran a sleazy drug franchise that destroyed the building.
There were "tight-asses", "sleazes", and "filler". Everyone thought they were better than everyone else. The "tight-assed" bosses decided to stop paying the mortgage payments, which killed Rochdale. Rent money then went to pay the salaries of the bosses who destroyed the place. Egomaniac motherfucker Alex MacDonald rented rooms in Rochdale, did his best to be THE BOSS, but never lived there. I do hope he and King Bill are dead.
Basically, Rochdale was filled with sleazy, obnoxious phonies who invaded each other's privacy. It was nothing in the late 1960's and a perverted anachronism in the 1970's.
I only lived there because it was in my neighbourhood. If it had been located in the suburbs, I would never have even visited the place. No other former resident can truthfully state this.
I am writing a novel about Rochdale, although it will not be fiction. It will be the truth about the hedonistic shit hole THAT WAS RUN BY AMERICANS! Half the fucking population were draft dodgers, and I NEVER once heard the phrase "draft dodger" in Rochdale.
Discussion in class brought up the question. Is the Rochdale (original) building still standing?
I'm an historian writing a book on Rochdale College. Please, get in touch if you want to talk about your experiences, tell me some unforgettable stories, or set the record straight on the stuff we always get wrong. You can be anonymous if you wish... email me at:
rochdalecollege@yahoo.com
Gee, I'm really sorry to see you speaking out this way. Long ago I had a positive opinion of you and spoke on your behalf. I feel myself wanting to respond at length to what you've said in a "comment" of yours above, but why bother. Everything is a near lunatic distortion of the truth, and I suspect that most others who read this will see there is something very wrong in your tones. You seem full of hate, and I regret whatever happened to make you this way. But I think it has to be more than just a few experiences in The Rock which has left you so embittered.
As for me, I lived in Rochdale from May 1969 through July 1975, and along with my son (who was born there in 1972) was among the last dozen to remain in the building. The story of Rochdale College is a very complex one. The people who lived there ranged in character from very very good to not very good at all, but I feel there were far more of the former type there.
So far, as Larry C has noted above, I believe, there have been no really comprehensive publications about Rochdale College, though I'd recommend both Brian Grievesons and Ralph Osborne's as being the most coherent -- partly because both of them are written from a personal perspective as long-time residents and neither of them claim or try to be a complete telling of the Rochdale tale. Ron Mann's movie completely distorts the history of the building by historicizing a small portion of the tale in a reasonably accurate way (as I recall) but then seeming to pass it off as the whole story. David Sharpe wrote some very interesting things about us, with the effort of being accurate. He was sincere, but hindered by showing up long after the Rochdale story was over and also perhaps by publication deadlines. I won't even comment on the one other large publication about Rochdale because I'd just as soon not advertise it. You can find it out there if you care to.
Finally, to those of you with little or no experience re Rochdale...there's not necessarily any reason you SHOULD be interested in our history, but if you are -- no one publication says it all, but a lot of stuff is available through the web and a few things through hard-copy publishing. Check out as much as you can, including stuff by that fellow calling himself Lonewolf. Decide for yourself what of it all seems the most coherent and/or sincere to you.
Oh, and if the guy who's writing the book is who I think it is, I think that based on his earlier work on that era he'll do an amazing job.
They began out of the late Captain George Henderson's VIKING BOOKS on Queen Street West (I was part of Queen street before it was Queen Street)and followed him to his MEMORY LANE BOOK SHOP in Markham Street (now Mirvish) Village.
In 1968 they were thirty steps above a pool hall on Bloor Street at the end of Yorkville.
Some people came out from Rochdale College.
They told me of a woman in residence there whom I knew from her writing, Judith Merril.
I went over to meet her. I was pre-punk punk head to foot in black and very intense.
"You scared the shit out of me when I first met you," Judy told me many years later.
Maybe I did but I had copies of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, METROPOLIS, the early Chaplin films and a host of others.
Judy sponsored me as a Rochdale Resource person.
I was there for part of the first year then moved to Ottawa where I stayed with my uncle, Douglas Hartt (then Director General of Public Works Canada).
I returned to Rochdale and Toronto briefly at the end of 1969 where I met my friend Spock (Brian Vaughan) who was then living in Hollywood.
He invited me out. I went.
In Hollywood a police officer who stopped me, when finding out I was from Toronto, asked what I had done there.
"I showed films at Rochdale College," I told him.
"Do you mean Canada's Communist Training Center," he asked.
Right there I knew that if the Hollywood police knew about Rochdale it had to be the hippest place on earth.
I was wasting my time in Hollywood.
I determined to head back and become part of it, turning down an invitation to meet major film star Mae west in the process.
I returned to Toronto, met with then President Of Rochdale, Peter Turner, and became Rochdale's Director Of Cinema Studies.
A thing is as real or as phony as the people who make use of it.
Rochdale was an opportunity I would not have missed. I am proud of my time there. I am proud of the people I met there. We lived through an amazing adventure.
I published my own account of my experiences titled THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED ROCHDALE COLLEGE.
You have not lived until you have stared down the barrel of a gun held in the hand of a policeman terrified for his life by everything he has heard, read and seen in the media about the place in which he has found you.
Rochdale ruined me for life in the best possible way.
When I got back to Toronto the Rochdale Office was abuzz. Waiting for me was a small perfumed envelope from Miss Mae West.
I opened it.
Inside I found a note: "When you are out this way again come up and see me."
She was a very great lady.
Wasn't your kid conceived during one of my W. C. Fields' programs.
There are a few people who were conceived during my programs there.
Only in Rochdale.
It was the hippest place on earth.
--Best, reg
I would like to find the books and have a special interest to revisit the art... did anyone take pics? Please let me know. Cheers....
One point to make, to add precision to your memories, which from an interesting perspective come close to the reality -- those who took the ambitions of Rochdale College seriously were more like people who didn't believe in mainstream schooling, or who at least had serious doubts about it, and who had a penchant toward experimentation and following a star.
As fate actually had it, most of the original organizers of Rochdale College were not able to follow through with their own hopes and dreams -- due to a labor strike which affected the planned opening of the building, most of the folks who originally were going to be a part of Rochdale were not able to move in. Thus a very different kind of experiment ensued once 341 Bloor was ready for tenancy. Some of the residents were those who remained as part of the earlier planned organization, while the larger number came from the U of T student population looking for places to live, and others from elsewhere in Toronto. (Thus also, some would argue "unfortunately" but others would differ, those bikers you referred to who became part of our population. I'll leave that debate for others except to say, learning is where you find it.)
Rochdale became The Rock, an experiment controlled by the times as much as by the efforts of those with sincere hopes and dreams of altering just a little the way humans old and young could practice learning and living in North America. I could close this with an RIP kinda comment, except that by all the commentary above, you can see so many of us are still around. For another example, I encourage you to go to: http://www.rochdalefarm.ca/
... that guy?
what a trip!
I am surprised you are still around leonard....thought you might have gone back to Halifax...your friend Pen Dencham did well for himself didnt he!
Get in touch. I have a 3D motion picture camera. Come by The Cineforum and record your story in depth.
Peyton
I no longer have your email address.
You sit down and talk. The camera records. Not an interview. You have a story to tell. Tell it.
We will record half an hour, take a break, record a second half hour (more if you want).
I will show you the results on screen in 3D.--Reg
Will it need to be sitting or standing only, or will the possibility of moving around just a bit while speaking be possible? Will it be possible (at my cost) to get a copy for myself of the completed product? 3d sounds great, but I could be humble enough to settle for a disk. (But I dig that the technology may not be able to indulge my humility.)
```Peyton
Of course, you will receive a copy of the interview.
You can download a Stereoscopic Player (a freeware program) to view it here:
http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stvmkr/index.html
it's fun to use and fairly intuitive.
This is my reply to a historian who asked to sit in:
As someone who has been interviewed to death I am all too familiar with interviews and interviewers.
As you are an historian working on a book on Rochdale you should know that I was Director Of Cinema Studies and that I gave Rochdale a Cinema Studies program better than anything offered by conventional universities.
If you don't know that you are not much of an historian. If you do know that and have not bothered to get in touch with me, well...
Both are sufficient reasons (capped with my distaste for interviewers) to, as Sam Goldwyn would so beautifully have put, include you out.
I want folks to just tell their story without prompting.
I do not want anyone near them with an agenda while they do it.
Having grown up with friar tuck and family (yes I know his real name)I went to see him often,good times
moved in between 1971-72 into to 726 (the only two bedroom apt on the floors)
the women use to just knock at our door
the pot and hash were everywhere (I still smoke even after all these years)
at 19 these were some of the best times of my life
thank you sookie for the memory recall
for the time of your life
join the life of your time
just don't get caught
FREEWHEELIN FRANKLIN
George S