Reg Hartt Spoken Word: The Night They Raided Rochdale College

Rochdale College began as a student high rise, transmorphed into the boldest experiment in alternate education ever undertaken and opened its doors, in 1968, as the only place on the face of the earth where, thanks to then Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, we could legally do hashish, LSD, marijuana and mescaline. It was 18 floors. The higher up we went, the higher we got. Talk illustrated by DREAMTOWER (1994) Ron Mann. Rochdale College was one of the most controversial experiments ever to have taken place in Canada. Set up as a combined free university and student residence, the eighteen-storey building in downtown Toronto opened in the fall of 1968 --at the height of the hippie boom. What was intended to be a radical educational institution rapidly became a meeting place for North America's burgeoning drug culture. With artists and educators jousting for position with motorcycle gangs and dealers in the same high-rise, Rochdale became a focal point for the best and worst dreams of the Canadian generation of baby boomers.