Chapter 6 From June Callwood: A Life of Action

Chapter 6

INTO THE FRAY: DIGGER HOUSE (1968)

YORKVILLE IS NOW a fashionable shopping area, but in the early 1960s this corner of downtown Toronto was a neighborhood of rooming houses, musty bookstores, and coffee shops. Teenagers liked to go there to hear jazz or folk music in the bars or restaurants, to play chess, to smoke marijuana, and to hang out and talk about everything from philosophy to literature to politics. Yorkville had a certain romantic aura back then. It was the place to be, in what June once called "the sweet hippie time."

By the late 1960s, June and Trent's oldest three children had finished high school and young Casey was in school full time. Their older son, Barney, had left home and was living in Yorkville. By this time, Yorkville had changed dramatically. It wasn't romantic anymore. Once in a while, Barney met someone who needed help and he brought that young person back home. June and Trent gave the visitor something to eat and a place to sleep overnight.

June identified with these young people. She remembered the times when she was a teenager and her family was running from the sheriff because they couldn't pay the rent. She imagined that she herself could have turned into a troubled kid. Maybe she even wondered what might happen to Barney if he didn't have a home to come back to.

June was curious to see what Yorkville was really like by then, and how the area had been transformed during the decade. After all, she was an investigative journalist. So she went to find out.

"When I'd been there for a little while," she said, "I discovered that all those people who had talked about Kierkegaard and philosophy into the night had gone, and that the kids who were there were hungry and homeless. I stayed to see if I could help."

Many of the young people who lived around Yorkville had run away to Toronto from faraway places like Newfoundland or Saskatchewan, or even the United States. These "hippies" had dropped out of school and had few job skills. They had no place to take a shower or get clean clothes. They had to beg for food, and often went hungry. Some had no shoes. Some had bad teeth. Many were frequently victimized by drug dealers and pimps.

They couldn't get treatment in hospitals or receive welfare. Some ended up committing suicide, after losing confidence in themselves and hope for the future.

Few people in authority understood the hippies' problems. One city politician at the time even said, "Let them get cold and wet and dirty. It's not for the taxpayers to support them. Firemen should have the authority to hose them down, just like we hose down a street. The police should keep them on the move. The do-gooders don't know what the hell they're talking about."

June didn't let such words stop her. She remembered how it had been in Belle River, where people helped each other. She knew she had to do something for these young people. They desperately needed a safe place to live, where they could get decent food, medical treatment, and counseling. So June threw herself into creating a refuge for these street kids. She became an "activist," a person who actively works on social issues, instead of waiting for "the authorities" or "the system" to solve problems. She said, "I realized then that we had to change society. That radicalized me."