Toronto Hippies and Beyond: 12 Surprising Stories, from Yorkville to Rochdale

Toronto hippies had a coffee house with a swimming pool out back, and a free university where students made the rules. A former mayor said some of them “haven’t been washed for weeks”. A hockey hero turned provincial politician called their neighbourhood a “festering sore”. And one Friday in 1968, a health scare cut the crowds on its main street to an estimated tenth of normal.

Here are 12 surprising stories, each with sources and a link to our longer history pages. We start in Yorkville, move into Rochdale College, then follow the thread past the hippies to a drug lab, a 2020 stock-market moment and a 2026 museum show.

Where did Toronto hippies hang out?

Mostly in Yorkville, about half a square kilometre of cafés, boutiques and galleries just north of Bloor Street. From September 1968, many Villagers moved to Rochdale College at Bloor and Huron, less than half a kilometre away. Our Yorkville history maps the street; the stories below add what it leaves out.

Evidence: established. Source: Henderson, 2006, a peer-reviewed history.

Yorkville stories: the Village, 1963 to 1968

1. The coffee house with a pool, a “Dungeon” and a drug inquiry

John and Marilyn McHugh opened the Penny Farthing in a grand old Victorian house in Yorkville in the spring of 1963. They added a backyard swimming pool, so customers could take a dip between cappuccinos. In early 1965, in a downstairs room known as the Dungeon, a Saskatchewan-raised singer then called Joni Anderson first performed her own songs. There she also met Chuck Mitchell, whose surname she kept.

On 17 October 1969, the same club hosted Ottawa. The Le Dain Commission, Canada’s inquiry into the non-medical use of drugs, held a public hearing there. The commission’s schedule opens in Toronto. The Penny Farthing was the first of only three coffee houses on it, ahead of the Bistro in Vancouver and the Back Door in Montreal. The club also sent a submission.

Evidence: established for the hearing and submission (the commission’s appendices); limited evidence for the pool, the Dungeon and Joni Mitchell (one encyclopedia feature). Sources: Canadian Encyclopedia; Le Dain Final Report, Appendices P and Q. Full account: the Le Dain Commission in Toronto.

2. City Hall’s licence freeze made Yorkville look cooler

By the spring of 1965, weekend street parties filled Yorkville Avenue. City Council tried to cool things down by freezing new coffee-house licences. Henderson calls the freeze “accidental propaganda”: young people took it as proof that Yorkville was cool.

The pressure kept building. In the spring of 1967, Syl Apps called Yorkville “a festering sore in the middle of the city”. Apps was a former Maple Leafs captain and chaired the Ontario legislature’s Select Committee on Youth. After an August 1967 sit-in on Yorkville Avenue, police parked a paddy wagon at Hazelton and Yorkville avenues on weekends to enforce a 10 p.m. curfew for anyone under 18, the City’s 2025 heritage study says.

Evidence: established for the freeze (Henderson) and Apps’s chairmanship (the committee’s 1967 report). His remark rests on Henderson, citing the Globe and Mail of 7 April 1967. Limited evidence for the curfew: one City study, marked FINAL on its cover but watermarked DRAFT inside. Sources: Henderson, 2006; Select Committee on Youth, 1967; City of Toronto, 2025. Full account: Yorkville in the 1960s.

3. Hippies versus City Hall, caught on film

In the summer of 1967, the argument moved indoors. The Diggers, political hippies led by a Villager named David DePoe, faced city councillors in what Henderson calls “farcical face-offs”. Manners and hygiene were the hot topics. In the transcript, former mayor Allan Lamport points at the young onlookers and says a number of them “haven’t been washed for weeks”.

Two National Film Board crews filmed in Yorkville that year: Mort Ransen’s Christopher’s Movie Matinee and Robin Spry’s Flowers on a One-Way Street, both from 1968. The NFB says the second centres on a council meeting at City Hall.

Henderson also reports two allegations about the film crews in general. Someone suggested in the House of Commons that they were complicit in illegal activity, and some alleged they helped incite the late-August violence. He cites no source for either, and we found nothing that settles them.

Evidence: established for the meetings, quote and films; unresolved for the allegations. Sources: Henderson, 2006; NFB. Full account: Yorkville in the 1960s.

4. A soup kitchen, a shelter and a famous “landlady”

Not every answer to the Village was a crackdown. The City’s 2025 heritage study says the Toronto Diggers, modelled on American groups, set out to give young Villagers food, shelter and medical help. They ran a soup kitchen at St. Paul’s Avenue Road United Church and later opened Digger House, a shelter on Spadina Avenue.

Henderson calls the journalist June Callwood “hippiedom’s most famous middle-class ally” and the “landlady” at Digger House. In late summer 1968, Canadian Welfare magazine printed her speech to the Women’s Canadian Club. She called the young people “society-damaged” children and “the loneliest, most frightened people in this land”.

Evidence: established for Digger House and the speech (Henderson); limited evidence for the Diggers’ aims, soup kitchen and Spadina address (one City study). Sources: City of Toronto, 2025; Henderson, 2006. Full account: Yorkville in the 1960s.

5. The hepatitis epidemic that wasn’t

In July 1968, Women’s College Hospital, which supervised a Yorkville street clinic called the Trailer, saw an unusual number of hepatitis patients. When the press got the story in early August, fear spread. Henderson reports press counts of almost 150 people sick by 9 August. A public pool 200 kilometres away in London, Ontario, was drained. Drivers rolled up their windows in 30-degree heat on Yorkville.

The province asked the public to “stay out of Yorkville”. On the first Friday after the outbreak was reported, Henderson says, crowds on Yorkville Avenue were estimated at a tenth of their usual size. “The whole street is down,” Marilyn McHugh of the Penny Farthing told the Globe and Mail. City controller Fred Beavis saw an upside: the outbreak “may have done a lot of good for Yorkville”.

The Ontario Department of Health’s September 1969 report found that 30 of the 32 people hospitalized with probable hepatitis had injected drugs (Henderson, 2006). There was no epidemic, Henderson concludes, just a minor outbreak almost entirely among people injecting drugs.

Evidence: established. Source: Henderson, 2006, citing the Department of Health report. Full account: Yorkville in the 1960s.

Rochdale stories: the tower at Bloor and Huron, 1968 to 1975

6. A college that began, in part, as a tax question

Rochdale started as student housing. The University of Toronto’s Campus Co-op incorporated it in 1964 to ease a shortage of rooms, Toronto Public Library (TPL) historians write. Then the co-op learned that the building’s yearly property tax of $175,000 would be waived if it housed a working educational system. So the residence became a college with a mandate to experiment.

In September 1968, students moved into the unfinished 18-storey tower: 840 residents, free tuition and cheap rent (TPL). The Canadian Encyclopedia says it offered no curriculum, exams, degrees or traditional faculty. Yet TPL says students could buy a degree if they needed one, and a guidebook excerpted by Spacing says “PhDs were cheaper than undergrad degrees”.

Evidence: established for the September 1968 opening (Henderson and TPL agree); limited evidence for the origin, tax waiver and 840 residents (one source each); unresolved on degrees. Sources: TPL; Henderson, 2006; Canadian Encyclopedia; Spacing. Full account: Rochdale College.

7. A drug-market reputation, its own clinic and a brief to Ottawa

As the Yorkville scene came apart, Rochdale began to “gobble up Villagers” as soon as it opened, Henderson writes. TPL says it “developed a reputation as Canada’s largest illicit drug market”, but we found no figures that measure the trade.

The building also looked after its own. At its peak, The Canadian Encyclopedia says, it held a collectively run health clinic, a library, radio and TV stations and a child-care centre. The Le Dain Commission’s report lists a “Rochdale Klinic (Toronto)” among Canada’s street clinics, and a Rochdale group, the Thirteenth Floor Cooperative, among those that presented submissions.

Evidence: established for the clinic and submission (the commission’s appendices); limited evidence for the other services (one encyclopedia entry); unresolved for the size of the drug trade. Sources: Henderson, 2006; TPL; Canadian Encyclopedia; Le Dain Appendices M and P. Full account: Rochdale College.

8. Welded shut, but the culture got out first

The money ran out first. In 1972 a court-appointed receiver took over. A Toronto Star caption from that year, reproduced by TPL, says the college was more than $4 million behind on mortgages and taxes. By the end of May 1975, the last were removed by force and the doors were welded shut.

Since 1979 the tower has been the Senator David A. Croll Apartments, home to seniors and people with disabilities. What outlived it was the culture. TPL lists groups that began at Rochdale and lasted, including House of Anansi Press, Coach House Books, Theatre Passe Muraille, This Magazine and the Hassle Free Clinic.

Evidence: established for the receivership (a 1972 newspaper caption), the 1975 closure and the later use (sources agree); limited evidence for the welding and the groups (one source each). Sources: TPL; Spacing; Canadian Encyclopedia. Full account: Rochdale College.

Beyond the Village: labs, law, money and a museum

9. Toronto tested LSD on alcoholism, ten people per group

While the Village made headlines, a Toronto team from the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation and Toronto Western Hospital ran a controlled LSD trial. Published in 1966, it split 30 people with a long history of heavy drinking into three groups of ten: LSD, an active placebo (ephedrine) or no drug.

Over six months, abstinence improved in all three groups, with no significant difference between them, a 2019 systematic review reports. With only ten people per group, that is a weak test. The review sums up the approach as “no attempt of psychotherapy”, with no music or visual stimuli. It notes that some authors argued the methods were far from those shown to work.

Its first author, Reginald Smart, also studied the street. A 1969 Addiction Research Foundation (ARF) report by Smart and colleagues, The Yorkville Subculture, drew on a researcher’s field notes. In 1998 ARF merged into the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

Evidence: established. Sources: Smart et al., 1966; Fuentes et al., 2019; Henderson, 2006, for the 1969 report. Full account: Toronto’s laboratory, 1966–1999.

10. Fake psilocybin, and a warning in the fine print

ARF’s chemists also tested what was sold on the street. In 1971–72 the Le Dain Commission looked nationally, through a survey of drug-analysis labs and its own collection. Of 32 samples sold as psilocybin, only one tentatively contained it, and 11 contained no drug at all (Le Dain Final Report, Appendix A.5).

There is a catch. Labs often received samples suspected of being adulterated, mislabelled or behind a bad reaction, so the commission said they “cannot be considered representative” of the drugs actually available. They show what reached the labs, not the street.

Evidence: established. Source: Le Dain Final Report, Appendix A.5. Full account: the Le Dain Commission in Toronto.

11. The week psychedelics went to market

In 2020, the money arrived. On 3 March 2020, MindMed began trading on the Canadian NEO Exchange. The exchange said it expected MindMed to become the world’s first publicly traded psychedelic pharmaceutical company (NEO release). The next day, Field Trip Health opened its first medical centre, in Toronto, for what it called psychedelic-enhanced psychotherapy, starting with ketamine.

Less than two weeks later, on 17 March 2020, Ontario declared a state of emergency over COVID-19. In January 2021, a Toronto-datelined NEO release announced what it called the world’s first psychedelics-focused exchange-traded fund.

Evidence: established (releases and regulation); “world’s first” is the companies’ own label. Sources: NEO, 2020; Field Trip release; O. Reg. 50/20; NEO, 2021. Full account: Bay Street catches the wave.

12. A 1967 photograph goes behind glass at the ROM

In 2026 the story reached the Royal Ontario Museum. Psychedelics: Art. Culture. Science. opened on 6 June with 90 objects; its exhibition page now lists it until 3 January 2027, four weeks later than first announced. A note says the museum “does not recommend or encourage the use of psychedelics”.

Two other objects stand out. In Ego Death Trip (2023), Annie MacDonell built a lenticular panel from a 1967 Toronto Star photograph of a woman on a psychedelic trip. And from CAMH’s archives, the ROM picked a wooden medicine tray and cups (1950–1976) from a male psychiatric ward of the old Queen Street Mental Health Centre.

Evidence: established, except the artwork (one newspaper review). Sources: ROM; CAMH; The Globe and Mail. Full account: Behind glass at the ROM.

What happened to Toronto hippies?

They didn’t vanish overnight. Henderson calls the August 1968 hepatitis scare “the beginning of the end”, and Rochdale took in many Villagers that autumn. By mid-summer 1969, the Toronto Telegram declared Yorkville’s “hippies are gone”. Speed had spread. The City’s heritage study says the Vagabonds motorcycle gang became more prominent the summer after the 1967 sit-in, selling drugs and providing enforcement.

Property changed the street for good. The same City study says developers were buying properties and, in some ways, using the counterculture “as a rationale for development”. It describes Yorkville’s turn into a high-end retail and residential neighbourhood.

Research carried on. In 2022 CAMH, which ARF had merged into, received what it called Canada’s first federal grant to study psilocybin. The trial tested whether any antidepressant effect depends on the psychedelic experience. The trial finished in April 2026, and in June CAMH said researchers were “currently analyzing the study’s results”. As of 4 October 2026, no results are published.

Evidence: established, except the Vagabonds and developer details (limited evidence: one City study, marked FINAL on its cover but watermarked DRAFT inside). Sources: Henderson, 2006; City of Toronto, 2025; CAMH, 2022; ClinicalTrials.gov; CAMH, June 2026. Full timeline: Psychedelic Toronto: a history.

What the record doesn’t settle

• Did the hepatitis scare end the Village on its own? Unresolved. Henderson treats it as the turning point, but by the end of 1967 he says Villagers already blamed media attention, overcrowding, poverty and speed.
• Did the NFB crews help incite the violence at the August 1967 protests? Unresolved. Henderson reports the allegation but cites no source, and we found nothing that settles it.
• Did Rochdale award degrees? Unresolved. The Canadian Encyclopedia says no; TPL and Spacing say they could be bought.
• How common were magic mushrooms in 1960s Toronto? Limited evidence. The only national assessment we found, from 1973, says very few people had tried them. For the wider story, read our history of magic mushrooms.

Watch and read more

• Stuart Henderson’s book Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s (University of Toronto Press, 2011).
• From the journal: the history of magic mushrooms, why magic mushrooms turn blue and the true story behind the Penis Envy name.
• Our documentaries: Tidal Wave and Penis Envy, or browse all Shroomverse films.

Shroomverse sells mushroom products. This article is general information about Toronto’s history. It isn’t medical or legal advice, and it doesn’t encourage anyone to use drugs.