Intolerance towards Hippies
Image: Hippie wedding on Mount Royal, 1967. Erik Slutsky (photographer), copyright 1967. Erik Slutsky collection. Courtesy of Erik Slutsky
Credit: ARCMTL collection. Interview was conducted in Montreal on February 20, 2021 with Richard King by Louis Rastelli, Director of ARCMTL.
Duration: 1:26 min
Richard King, a friend of Gary Eisenkraft, talks about the arrests during a love-in, as well as the general intolerance towards Hippies in Montreal in the 1960s.
Transcription:
Richard King: […] there was a love-in on Mount Royal, it was in the summer. We had those in those days. I know it sounds ridiculous, but what the heck? And the cops, I mean, talk about intolerant! It was a bunch of Hippies bothering absolutely no one. Maybe they were smoking… smoking drugs.
That was a nice day in the park, and they charged on horses and scared the crap out of everybody. And I think three or four people were arrested, not the least of whom was Maggie Gundstone’s mom. Maggie worked at the Penelope and her mom used to hang around. Um, and I think her mom was arrested and Maggie. Um, I think Mike Nemeroff’s girlfriend was arrested. You know, half a dozen people were arrested, and we had to go down…
There was less going on than the Tam Tam jam [sessions still going on on sundays at the foot of Mount Royal]. It was just a bunch of Hippies in the park; singing or dancing or doing something that we thought that people in Haight-Ashbury did. It was a pretty pale imitation of, you know, San Francisco Hippies, but it was that idea. Um, but Montreal, y’know the intolerance… It took a long time for tolerance to go anywhere near this city. And I think we’re a long way off.