Music scenes: By the time you’ve found them, they’re usually over. “You had to be there, man,” is their mantra. They live, die and burn out (better than fading away) by word of mouth, to such a degree that the bands, venues, labels and even the fans come second to the buzz. Is Canada any different? DailyXY’s blog miniseries will examine the great Canadian music scenes of the last five decades.

Part 2: TORONTO/Yorkville (1965-1970)

“I don’t know if people knew exactly what it was. But it was happening.”
—Bernie Finkelstein, manager

You can buy a diamond ring in Yorkville, but you can’t buy me love.

In the 1960s, a few blocks located in central downtown came alive as either the most important cultural neighbourhood in Toronto’s history or, per then-city councillor and former Toronto Maple Leaf player Syl Apps, a “festering sore” filled with drugs and disease. Points of view aside, no one would dispute that the difference between the area then and now is staggering.

Once an embodiment of ’60s counterculture filled with soon-to-be influential young musicians and writers, Yorkville is now an open-air shopping mall catering to the city’s most affluent consumers. In the same spot you might have found folky youngsters perched on crowded townhouse doorsteps and scribbling lyrics, today you’ll watch them overpay for furry boots and alligator t-shirts.

The coffeehouses are long gone, replaced by massive, high-end retail stores, ritzy restaurants, and parks with trees encased in concrete. The most important spot of the ’60s lot, the Riverboat Coffee House, closed in 1975 not before Neil Young included it in “Ambulance Blues,” from 1974’s On the Beach:

Back in the old folky days
The air was magic when we played.
The riverboat was rockin’
In the rain

There had been magic in the air: the sounds of bands like The Paupers, Kensington Market, and The Ugly Ducklings, who filled the busy row of coffee houses every night. There was a surfeit of bands, and venues to match. Though folk is what the area became known for, it didn’t discriminate against acts based on genre, and it wouldn’t be strange to hear anything from psychedelic rock to jazz to rockabilly.

Throughout the decade, many bands split, merged, folded or faded. Others became better known by different names. The Hawks became The Band, the Sparrows became Steppenwolf, and former Mynah Birds members Neil Young and Rick James made it big on their own, as did Yorkville solo regulars Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot.

In the mid-’60s, bohemian hotspots were popping up all over the continent. As remembered by Bernie Finkelstein, True North Records founder and artist manager (Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLauchlan, Dan Hill), Yorkville was made unique by the anti-war stances of its population of draft dodgers, commensurate with a heightened ear for social activism. This, at the same time as the birth of a new Canadian nationalism, bringing hope to this youth movement with a new national flag (symbolizing a new identity) and, previously unimaginable, a hip Prime Minister: Pierre Trudeau.

But that’s only what the scene looked like with the bias of time. In the ’60s, there were no Yorkville musical legends: the storied careers and the stories themselves were just beginning. Understandably, the squares in the rest of the city had mixed opinions about the area. A 1967 CBC exposé on Yorkville tried to answer the five W’s about the then-mysterious hippie haven. The feature ended up focusing on most of its time on marijuana and LSD, propagating the belief that Yorkville was a hangout for lazy, vaguely political addicts.

Uneasiness turned to fear in 1968, when a hepatitis outbreak sparked a media frenzy. Just over 30 cases were reported chiefly as a result of shared needles but it didn’t stop the media from calling it an epidemic, which some argued gave those in power the excuse to transform the area under the guise of cleaning it up.

Today, you can find what Yorkville was on iPods and bookshelves, hopefully owned by the same types of people, young and young at heart, who most likely would have called its ’60s incarnation home.

“There was so much powerful music. Why was there so much powerful music in the ’60s? That’s an open question. As to whether there’s as much powerful music today or not, I don’t know. But those acts from the ’60s that lasted, everybody still knows.”
—Bernie Finkelstein, manager

The DailyXY SoundScenes Playlist: Toronto/Yorkville
(Suggested alphabetically, by artist)
Kensington Market, “I Would Be the One”
Gordon Lightfoot, “Early Morning Rain”
Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”
The Paupers, “If I Call You by Some Name”
The Ugly Ducklings, “Gaslight”

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Image courtesy of Susana.