Montreal People’s Yellow Pages with Garth Gilker

Garth Gilker, editor of the Montreal People’s Yellow Pages guide, tells ARCMTL how he cataloged the alternative part of the city that flourished between the summer of Expo 67 and that of the 1976 Olympic Games. 

(The above 1973 map, from Garth Gilker’s Montreal People’s Yellow Pages, identifies some of Montreal’s several “head shops”, mostly located on Prince-Arthur Street, in the heart of the Village du Carré Saint-Louis. These smoking paraphernalia shops emerged directly from the hippie movement and reflected the increase in drug use among Montrealers at the turn of the decade.)

Transcription:

Louis Rastelli: You mentioned being inspired in Amsterdam but you didn’t mention what publications you saw there. Was it in the Red Light district?

Garth Gilker: I think it might have been called the Amsterdam Yellow Pages, and there was also one from San Francisco too, the Whole Earth Catalogue was coming out at the same time as well. You could tell that they were printed in small runs, that’s what gave me the idea, I knew that I could do that too. So I dropped out of University and I decided I was going to do Montreal People’s Yellow Pages.

Louis Rastelli: I like how the People’s Yellow Pages has a mix of nightlife and fun stuff, but also important resources like health clinics that provide abortions…

Garth Gilker: And the price of marijuana & hashish, which back then, nobody was printing that information.

Louis Rastelli: Was that why there’s a certain anonymity to it, and why there’s a P.O. Box… ? 

Garth Gilker: Yeah, that’s station “G” –That was at Clark and Pine Avenue, in that building on the southwest corner. That was our post office, then it became a bar, I think it might have been called Secrets or something.

Louis Rastelli: It was considered safe at the time, a post-office box… What sort of research team did you assemble to make sure, for example, that you got all the marijuana prices right…

Garth Gilker: Me! I did all the research. (smiles)