There are long tropes pining for a wonderful world filled with home cooked meals served at a kitchen table, children that treated adults with respect just like on the “Brady Bunch”, nuclear families that went to church on Sundays, and people that were satisfied with the simple life. There are endless posts about how people saluted the flag, sang national anthems, and on and on. Dare I say: a world where people did not live in poverty or fear, and everyone had a place in society? What I remember of the sixties: it was not like that.
In this town, there were roving bands of twelve year old children
who were armed with “knuckle dusters” and chains. These pups would then “rumble”
with their adversaries from the “
Bar fights were very real. Which is why clubs flourished --- they could limit their membership to provide some level of safety. These clubs took names like “The Miner’s Library Club” to announce their veneer of respectability. Those clubs encouraged wives to attend with their husbands for a drink or dance in relative peace. But there were plenty of clubs that barred women.
Violence was not only physical. It could be more subtle but no less destructive. I remember when it was rumored that a public personality in the community was gay, and for years the laughter and derision at his expense was merciless and relentless. Any hint of behavior deemed effeminate was met with ridicule. Girls were raised to be “good moms”, and it was important “make a man out of the boy.” Don’t forget that homosexuality was a criminal offence and the prison sentences were very real.
Skin color attracted violence. Not necessarily the kind where people were publicly beaten on the streets but where First Nations were isolated and segregated. I learned about that when I befriended a Métis playmate. I couldn’t even speak English, but I learned that if you didn’t want your germs passed around the classroom with howls of derision then you didn’t hang with that playmate. It’s tempting to dismiss it as childish behavior, but it was pervasive enough to cause one teenage school mate to take his own life. That behavior permeated this small town, and although adults were more subtle, they were no less hurtful.
Segregated residential schools were still around during the sixties. Several
residential schools were boarded up in between 1956 and 1968, but the local Saint
Mary’s residential school remained active and under federal government
administration until 1988. I’ll share
another memory: When some school friends drove to
By the late 1960s things began to change. The quiet revolution was in full swing in
So the greasers grew their hair, and dumped their helmets. But they didn’t become hippies or join the neighborhood teen drop-in centers. Rather, greasers formed motorcycle gangs, pretended that they were Hells Angels, and sold drugs. They're still out there.
Nevertheless the winds of change blew into even our small city as the college grew and a liberal arts university was founded. Education was accessible, and home ownership was affordable and encouraged during the late sixties and early seventies --but mostly for men.
Although women were finally recognized as “persons” under Canadian law in 1930, and therefore able to vote, women and aboriginals were not guaranteed that right until 1960. Property rights were guaranteed for women under the Canadian Human Rights act of 1977. Women found it nearly impossible to access credit or credit cards for much of the 1960’s or 70’s. Women’s liberation was gaining momentum, but feminists were simply dismissed as “bra burners” for decades later.
That battle is still being fought today as the “Me Too” movement campaigns for just treatment of women. But at least today we acknowledge the past mistreatment of First Nations, minorities, and women.
Children in abusive households supposedly have a safety net today that didn’t exist for previous generations. Apparently the police don’t take the child back to an abusive home without at least some investigation. Women’s and children’s shelters provide some level of safety compared to the 1960’s and 70’s. I can recount horror stories of children and women of my generation that suffered constant abuse because there was no help or respite available.
On television, our two channel universe was expanded by cable TV and CNN, but even cable TV didn’t come close to the information
universe that we have today. We can
still watch “Gilligan’s
My daughter tells me that when she worked in retail trade, she thought people my age were the most likely to be rude, abusive, and adversarial. I believe her. My "well mannered" generation lost some of its courtesy along the way.
It must be easy for people to wallow in some nostalgic make-believe world, because a lot of them do it. But nostalgia is not all fun and games when they really believe in their imaginary world. Nostalgia can lead to revisionism. If nostalgia is an annoying sniffle, then revisionism is a cancer.
The mayor of our city campaigned for office stating that he would build a fence around the local homeless shelters so that the homeless don’t pester local businesses. It's a sure bet that most of the homeless here are indigenous people or addicts. Sounds like echoes of residential schools to me: maybe to hide the “problems” out of sight, or in ghettos “like the old days”.
Nostalgia may give voice to ideas
that are wrong headed and dangerous, but it sure sells. The National Post, a national newspaper, prints
opinion articles by Jordan Peterson, whose views on violence (“If you were in my room at the
moment, I’d
slap you happily.”[1]),
women ( “First, I don’t think there is any evidence that women are
systematically held back.”[2]),
and his opposition to extending Canada’s human rights laws to trans status
people are well documented. The Post
also features articles by Conrad Black attacking “leftist ideas". Black was formerly a member of the "Canadian
Establishment" whose criminal sentence in the
In the 1960s tanks rolled into
I suppose that’s the thing about getting old: you think you’ve
seen it all and write about it. But if
you haven’t been blinded by nostalgia, then you’ve seen enough to be realistic. Try to ignore the senseless
bullshit about how tough we have it now and how great the world was in the old
days. Nostalgia lies. The world is a better place than it was, but
our work is cut out for us to make the world as good as it can be.
We must do better than we have in the past. Doing better requires realistic understanding of the past, concerted effort for a brighter future, and a lot less bullshit nostalgia.
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