LSD: A Talk with Reg Hartt
In 1968 Reg Hartt was showing Mae West in her first starring film SHE DONE HIM WRONG (1931) at newly opened Rochdale College in Toronto. Rochdale was both a student high rise and an experiment in alternate education. There were resource people who had established prominence in their own fields (among them Judith Merril, the mother of modern science/speculative fiction). There were, however, no classes and no teachers. Each person was to be their own teacher.
The Honourable Pierre Trudeau, then the Prime Minister of Canada, had decided to allow within the walls of Rochdale the use of hashish, LSD, marijuana and mescaline. Rochdale was eithteen floors. The higher up you went, the higher you got.
A few minutes into the movie a fellow came in and said to Reg Hartt, "Would you care to do some LSD?"
"No," said Hartt.
On screen a young girl had tried to kill herself. She was brought to Mae West character, Diamond Lou. "I have gone wrong. What man is going to want me," said the girl to Mae West who fired back, "Listen honey, when women go wrong men go right after them."
Reg laughed and said to the fellow who had offered him the LSD, "Hey, you. Come back here."