1967: The Unlikely Revolutionary

Forty years ago this city was celebrating peace and love and Expo 67. Not me. I was babysitting, cheerleading and watching Star Trek. It was my thoroughly square mother who became the unlikely revolutionary

By Anne Novak

I was in the other 1967. Not the one that everyone now officially remembers, thanks to a brainwashing cascade of media images about the year. In my 1967, there was no summer of love. There was no human be-in in Stanley Park. There was no first-ever anti-Vietnam War rally downtown. There was no protest over plans to build a highway through the city. There were no drugs.

Instead, I was one of the thousands of suburban Vancouver kids who had only the vaguest idea of the revolution that was going on, too inhibited or young or preoccupied with being accepted to even consider turning on, tuning in or dropping out. We were entrenched, not in the media image of 1967, but in the real 1967 that most people off-stage lived that year, closer in spirit to the ’50s than the ’60s.

In the real 1967, my world revolved around my teenage-girl, junior-high-school life in North Van. There was an endless round, faithfully recorded in my tedious adolescent journals, of Math, P.E., English, French, drama, socials. I fretted over homework and my marks. I was a cheerleader in an era when cheerleaders weren’t necessarily bombshells, just energetic girls willing to yell loudly and jump a lot. I babysat for hours on end, at 50 cents an hour, and practiced the piano for more hours. I went to mass every Sunday with my family at the Roman Catholic church in Lynn Valley where Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret Sinclair would be married four years later.

My girlfriends and I rollerskated at the Stardust rink on Marine Drive and we went to movies—To Sir With Love, Bonnie and Clyde—at the Totem on Lonsdale. We supported each other in our hopeless crushes on various boys in the school (“Louise found out today where Dave lives!!!”) and listened moonily to the songs that would intensify our already white-hot hormone-fuelled in-love-with-love craziness. We were not alone. It’s worth remembering that “I’m a Believer” by The Monkees ranked ahead of The Doors’ “Light My Fire” and The Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” on many 1967 hit lists.

I watched Star Trek religiously and my heart literally ached at the thought that Mr. Spock would never know who I was, would never kiss me. I sewed endlessly. Girls were taught in Home Ec to sew, put in a zipper, baste darts. (We weren’t allowed to take power mechanics.) Since I was from a Depression-era Prairie family, I was encouraged to make all my own clothes as soon as I had the basic skills. So I did, after thrilling forays with my mother to Army & Navy on Hastings or Gold’s on Granville for patterns and fabric.

And yet, and yet. In spite of ourselves, the other 1967 did start to creep into our relentlessly conventional lives. We ended up floating along the rushing stream of social revolution in a haphazard way, not out of any conviction or even understanding, and certainly not out of any desire to make profound changes. It had more to do with the teenage desire to fit in.

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