Peace Camp and Temple House, Summer and Fall 1964

On arriving back in Toronto in July of 1964 I had a problem. Namely: no money, no job, and no place to live. I went to Stan’s place and used the phone to call my old friend Jack. When I explained my situation he told me that maybe John Lee could help. John was running a Peace Camp on behalf of the Student Christian Movement that summer. Jack gave me the number.

I told John’s widow, many years later, that one thing I could always count on was that whenever I asked John for help, he gave it immediately, unquestioningly. John told me where the camp was and invited me to come over; he could see what he could do.  The Student Christian Movement, in the 1960’s, was one of the most radical campus-based groups in the country. Every summer it organized “camps” across the nation where young people from university campuses would live together and focus on some aspect of social services. There were mental health camps where members worked in the field over the summer, or worker camps, where members worked in industry; casual study groups would help coordinate and integrate what they were learning in their fields. The Peace Camp that John was coordinating that summer was devoted to studying issues relating to world peace, with students working wherever they could find jobs. It was located in Trinity Square, a collection of older homes on a short street near the Toronto General Hospital, the street dominated by Holy Trinity Anglican Church—a large stone imitation gothic building. Eaton’s eventually took over the entire area, razing the homes to make way for a downtown shopping centre, isolating the church. At the time, Holy Trinity was virtually abandoned, but over the next several years it became a centre for the homeless and gay rights activism, led by the Reverend Don Heap, later a friend and a member of parliament.

I was invited to stay for dinner with the chatty, enthusiastic students from across Canada. They agreed to discuss my situation in a meeting after dinner. I took a walk through downtown Toronto while they decided. The new city hall was under construction and I admired the inward-curved towers embracing the central clam-shell council chambers. There was a catwalk between the towers near the top so construction workers would not have to descend then ascend if they need to move to the other tower. A few days later one of the camp members and I climbed the concrete staircase in one tower and crossed the catwalk to the other for the descent. I paused midway, realizing I was one of the few people who would ever see downtown Toronto from this vantage point.

In any case, the campers decided I could stay while they worked out a solution for me. Over the next few weeks I sat in on their discussions of the war in Vietnam (which, at that time, was largely being ignored by the press) and on nuclear disarmament. They were enthusiastic and optimistic that their efforts would have an effect on the world. One young man decided to go on a hunger strike to support world peace. An excited young reporter form the Toronto Star came to interview him; hunger strikes were something new and interesting. The students were planning on attending a demonstration at the American Bomarc missile base in La Macaza, Quebec and invited me to join them. A half-dozen of us crowded into John’s car for the drive to northern Quebec. We reached Ottawa in the dark and crossed the Ottawa River. Hull, then, was a collection of tiny houses interspersed with taverns and depanneurs. We drove along gravel roads through thick forest, finally deciding to stop for the night at a clearing beside the road. We rolled up in sleeping bags on the ground. In the morning we reached out destination, a large log cabin. There were perhaps 50 other people there and later that afternoon a shout went up, “The Heaps are here. The Heaps are here.” An old much-battered van pulled up, driven by a middle-aged man with a thick black beard, accompanied by his short heavy-set wife and six children, all blond, blue-eyes, self-possessed, and apparently old hands at this sort of thing. We trained in passive resistant techniques, taking on roles of brutal military police and polite, soft-spoken protesters. Schedules were drawn up. We were to picket the military base for two days before blockading it.

I was assigned to stand by the road leading into the base holding a sign. A picture of me appeared on the back cover of the Student Christian Movement national journal a few months later with the caption, “A Christian Takes a Stand.” As evening approached there were only four of us left. Townsfolk drove out to see these “peaceniks” come to visit their corner of the world and flashed thumbs up at us. After dinner a large group of us picked up sleeping bags and began a long hike to where we were to spend the night—another cabin a couple of miles away. Night fell as we marched. The only way I knew where to go was to keep the person in front of me in sight. The next day more local residents came out to stare at these strange peaceniks lining the road leading into the base. A few young men flirted with our female members in heavily-accented broken English.

Early next morning, in a heavy fog, the entire contingent marched to the base’s main gate where a row of military police waited. Our spokesperson approached the camp commander who was waiting and informed him politely that we wished to enter the camp to turn it into a school for native Canadians (which is what happened years later when the bases was finally abandoned.) The commander refused and was informed that, in that case, we intended to blockade the base for three days. At a signal we all sat down on the pavement. As the sun burned away the fog, what had been a cold August morning turned into a blisteringly hot day. Heavy sweaters came off. In the afternoon a group of French Canadians from a local nationalist group joined us, but kept off to themselves playing a game I had never seen before that involved tossing handfuls of soft-drink caps into the air and then counting the number of heads up and heads down.

John had to be back at work the next day, so we left in the early evening directly from the protest site. He drove nearly all night to get back to Toronto by next morning. I heard later that the military police played loud rock ‘n roll records all night and shone bright lights on the sleeping protesters. Early next morning they went out among the groggy protesters and dragged or picked them up, bodily throwing them into the ditch alongside the road. The protesters picked themselves up and sat back down on the road. This went on for 20 or 30 minutes until the military police noticed someone taking pictures. They stopped their actions and resumed standing at ease across the entrance to the base. A picture of the encounter made it onto the cover of Maclean’s magazine under the caption, “Peace March Comes to Canada.” This was the pattern for three days until, at a signal, the protesters struggled to their feet, collected their belongings and left the base, exactly as they had said they were going to do all along.

John told me they had located something for me. A group of students were running a coop. The idea was that I could do some cooking and cleaning in exchange for meals. He had located a rooming house a short distance away where the rent was only $7.50 a week. He would pay the first few weeks until I found a source of income. In discussions with him I said I thought I could handle the rest of my highschool by correspondence course, so this looked like a plan. He gave me the address so I went to check it out. It was an older 3-story home on Huron Avenue. The only person home was ensconced behind a desk in a glassed in porch off the rear of the house on the second floor. He introduced himself as the “manager” of the coop, which turned out to be a non-existent position. At the time I believed him. He was merely renting a room for the summer while the students were away. That was his method of operating, as I slowly learned over the coming years. He was a hanger on at the edges of the University of Toronto and the artist community, sometimes manipulating and exploiting the innocent and naïve.

I moved into the room in the rooming house and began spending my days at Temple House, as the coop was called. As the regular members returned from their summer jobs, the “manager” moved out. I was told that the coop was named for William Temple (1881- 1944), Archbishop of Canterbury (1942-44). Archbishop William was a noted theologian who worked for the relief of the victims of the Nazis during the war. Several of the students who lived in the coop were studying social work at the University of Toronto, but not all were students. One worked at the CBC; another was a librarian who worked at the Toronto Library’s main branch. Two of them had just returned from spending the summer in Cuba, a working tour that had been arranged through the Student Christian Movement. The USA had recently embargoed Cuba and tensions ran high. Even many Canadians were suspicious of the Castro regime, parroting American anti-Communist propaganda lines. Most of Temple House’s residents were members of the Student Christian Movement, though, as I soon learned, the house was split between the members of the United Church of Canada and Anglicans. The Anglicans attended services at the local church, St. Thomas’s, a few blocks south of the coop. I joined them. As I had attended an Anglican Church for a few years between the ages of 8 and 10 I was comfortable with the service. A young assistant priest would accompany us back to the coop for Sunday lunch.

Temple House, Huron Avenue, Toronto.

Temple House tended to be something of a gathering centre for students living in the area. There seemed always to be a discussion group on-going in the living room. Alice Heap, national secretary of the Student Christian Movement was a frequent visitor and sometimes guests were invited to give a talk. I was particularly entranced by a talk by the dean of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Dr. Boyd Neel who told us that the best way to study music was to study medicine. (He, himself, was a surgeon with an illustrious career in music.) A few months later he, personally, gave me a tour of the Royal Conservatory while discussions about granting me a scholarship were on-going. Baird Knechtel, my old highschool music teacher, continued giving me violin lessons once a week at his home, took me to concerts at the U of T’s Hart House, and sent me to see an elderly German violin teacher and member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra who gave me a book on bowing techniques. Mac Belt bought me lunch once a week at a restaurant near his office. I decided that the first course I would take by correspondence was grade 12 chemistry. A few lessons in I realized that I could not complete it. I was expected to conduct experiments requiring lab equipment and chemicals I simply did not have access to.

Lack of a source of income was a major problem for me. There was nothing I could do about paying the rent in the rooming house. I had noticed a small room in the basement of Temple House, so I asked for it and the coop members agreed I could live there. Though I knew nothing about cooking and preparing food, I was assigned the job of doing all the grocery shopping and preparing one meal a day. I ordered canned vegetables from a food wholesaler that I heated up on the stove, peeled and boiled potatoes and served some kind of meat—usually fried hotdogs. Eventually I was assigned a member to help me with the grocery shopping and the other students took turns preparing dinner. 

One of the students who had spent the summer in Cuba was taking a year off from her studies at the University of Manitoba. Faye and I began a relationship that continued to the present, though it was romantic for only the first four years or so. Those first few months I was jealous and possessive, uncertain of my standing with this woman five years my senior, very unclear on how to handle a sexual relationship, and virtually no knowledge or experience with intimate relationships. She was the first person in my life who I was close to and I was untrusting and suspicious. I was baffled, entranced, and leery. Once she thought she might have become pregnant, despite our care, and she and Alice Heap spent an afternoon in her room discussing various options which, at the time, were very few. Basically the choices were: have the child, find a back street butcher and possibly be maimed or die, or fly to Sweden, the only country in the world where abortions were medically and legally available. Fortunately, it turned out to be a false alarm.

I spent a lot of time writing poetry, exploring my new-found path. Being surrounded by university students, I had access to their many books and recommendations. I read a lot that fall: “The ABC of Reading” by Ezra Pound, “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, “The Stranger” by Albert Camus, “Being and Nothingness” by Jean-Paul Sartre, “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, “Generation of Vipers” by Philip Wylie, everything by Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton I could get my hands on. I recall reading the entire text of “After the Fall” by Arthur Miller and read several of Shakespeare’s plays, including “King Lear.” One of the students gave me a Bible that I still have. I discovered Bob Dylan and listened to his early protest songs over and over. “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “The Times They are a-Changing,” “Chimes of Freedom,” “and “Blowing in the Wind.” Faye sent me to meet a friend of hers from the University of Manitoba who was a poet and artist. Marvyne and I became friends (to this day), she acting as an adviser on my poetry efforts those first few years. In other words, I was a getting a 1960’s general arts education without attending a single class.

But, in late November, in a fit of adolescent anguish after a misunderstanding with Faye, I slashed my wrist with a razor blade. This time I was driven by ambulance to the real loony bin: 999 Queen Street West. It was decided to keep me under observation for a month. I was put in an open ward and, despite my request not to do so, they contacted my father. I woke from an afternoon nap to find him sitting by my bed. He was quiet and concerned. He spoke to an attendant about getting me a haircut. The next day the attendant led me through the back wards where the failed experiments were kept; people, whose brains had been invaded by ignorant surgeons, slashing and cutting randomly, sat staring into nothing, cigarettes held loosely burning their fingers. I got the haircut that had so concerned my father. Jean Lee was working as a social worker at the hospital at the time and I was free to drop in on her and chat. She gave me advice on how to handle my sexual relationship with Faye. She arranged for tutors to visit me to help with high school math and history. My father returned a few days later and sat uncomfortably when a group of girls from Temple House arrived, laughing and joking. They brought me a copy of Playboy and a copy of Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot.” My father was clearly baffled by both gifts. In his world young women did not give young men copies of dirty magazines and why would someone write a book about an idiot? I next saw him again about 17 years later when I visited him with my wife and eldest son who was a few months old at the time.

When I was released it was decided that my presence in Temple House was too disruptive given the problems that my relationship with Faye were causing. I knew they were right. After Christmas, Mac Belt managed to get me a job with the Unemployment Insurance Commission. I found a room in a rooming house a few doors down the street from Temple House. This, my second foray into the business world was no more successful than my first. At the time, Unemployment Insurance was a relatively new government initiative and it was as grudgingly given as was welfare. Applicants had to line up to receive a card with their name and history on it, then take the card to the Employment Office, in the same building, where they would line up and get their card stamped to demonstrate that they had been to the employment bureau in search of work. They would then return to the UIC office, line up and hand their card to a clerk who would complete a form verifying that they were actively searching for employment, have them sign it, and then put the paper work into the system so that a cheque could be prepared and mailed to them. It was an absurd and wasteful system, governed by attitudes of condescension and paternalism. My job was simple: fetch and collect the cards for the clients. As I was staying up most of the night making out with Faye, writing poetry, or reading, I found it difficult to get up in time for work. About 10:00 am my landlady would barge into my room as I slept with a vacuum cleaner which she smashed into furniture making as much noise as she could. After a couple of weeks, Mac Belt called me one morning to let me know I had been fired.

Back to the drawing board.

I thought long and hard about my next step. I came up with an idea that served me well; one which included a lesson I applied again a few times during my lifetime and later tried to share with my sons. I could not get up in the morning, but I had no trouble staying up all night. Solution: find a night job. What sort of job is there where people work at night and sleep during the day? Night watchman. So, I looked up security companies in the telephone book and walked to the closest one: Barnes Security. I lied, said I was 21, and was hired and given a uniform. I did not want to stay in the rooming house, especially as I would now have to sleep all day when the owner was busy with her loud and disruptive housework. I spoke to Alice Heap, knowing that they sometimes gave rooms to young people in their home. She was reluctant, but I persisted. Finally she sighed and gave in. And so I went to live with one of the most radical socially-active families in the country. Don and Alice died a few years ago after a life-time of social activism, including, for Don, many years as a Toronto municipal councilor and a Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party. When they had to leave their home they sold it, at their original cost, so it could be used as a centre for refugees.  Their children are still active in movements and groups committed to making the world a little bit better for everyone. Alice charged me $10 a week room and board and I was expected to share in household tasks, as were all the children. This was to be my home for the next several months. I had no idea at the time that I was only two years away from realizing my dream of entering university as a full-time student.