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PSYCHEDELIC TORONTO · PART 1

Yorkville in the 1960s: the Village.

The alien standing in a glowing basement folk-club doorway at the foot of stone steps, holding a coffee cup, a guitar leaning on the brick wall beside it.

For roughly ten years, a few blocks north of Bloor Street were the crossroads of Toronto’s youth culture. Here’s what the record shows about Yorkville’s 1960s, from the first coffee houses to the summer the crowds stayed away.

From Gerrard Street to Yorkville

At the end of the 1950s, Toronto’s small bohemian community lost its old haunts around Gerrard Street to hospital redevelopment. It moved north, into the Victorian houses of Yorkville. European-style coffee houses became the heart of the scene. Historian Stuart Henderson calls Yorkville the crossroads of Toronto’s youth culture “for a period of roughly 10 years”.

A dim 1960s coffee-house counter at night with a chrome espresso machine, small white cups and a battered guitar case leaning against it.
European-style coffee houses became the heart of the scene. Illustration by Shroomverse, AI-generated.

The coffee houses

  • The Penny Farthing opened in the spring of 1963, run by John and Marilyn McHugh. In early 1965 it became the first coffee house to feature Joni Mitchell’s own songs.
  • The Riverboat opened in October 1964 in a basement at 134 Yorkville Avenue, run by Bernie Fiedler. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn and Murray McLauchlan all played there. It ran as the Riverboat until June 1978.

City Hall pushes back

In the spring of 1965, City Council imposed a moratorium on coffee-house licences, and undercover and beat police were sent onto the streets. In 1967, Syl Apps called Yorkville “a festering sore in the middle of the city”. Apps was a member of the provincial legislature, chaired its Select Committee on Youth, and was a former Maple Leafs captain.

The summer of 1967

The Summer of Love brought record numbers of young people. A love-in at Queen’s Park supported closing Yorkville Avenue to cars, and a sit-in on the avenue followed. About 50 people were arrested. Henderson calls that August’s “Siege of Yorkville” the high point of the scene.

A street of Victorian houses at night, closed by wooden sawhorse barricades, with chalk flowers and peace symbols drawn on the road.
The car-free street the 1967 love-in called for; a sit-in on Yorkville Avenue followed. Illustration by Shroomverse, AI-generated.

Henderson describes the Villagers of 1968 as still getting high on LSD, marijuana and the psychedelic music scene. A small minority injected amphetamines.

Looking after their own

The Toronto Diggers fed and sheltered the Village’s young people. They ran a soup kitchen at St. Paul’s Avenue Road United Church, and later opened the Digger House shelter on Spadina Avenue. Journalist June Callwood was its “landlady” in 1968.

A church-hall kitchen with rows of soup bowls on a long wooden table and a steaming pot on an old stove.
The Toronto Diggers ran a soup kitchen at St. Paul’s Avenue Road United Church. Illustration by Shroomverse, AI-generated.

August 1968: the epidemic that wasn’t

  • July: the Trailer, a street clinic run by Women’s College Hospital, saw an unusual number of hepatitis patients.
  • 3 August: Toronto’s newspapers broke the story.
  • 5 August: a “Danger! Hepatitis” flier went up around Yorkville.
  • 7 August: the Toronto Star told readers that anyone who had eaten in a café there might have been exposed.

The province asked the public to stay away, and crowds on Yorkville Avenue fell to about a tenth of normal.

A small white trailer parked at the kerb of a street of Victorian houses at dusk, its door open and its interior lit.
The Trailer, a street clinic run by Women’s College Hospital, saw an unusual number of hepatitis patients in July 1968. Illustration by Shroomverse, AI-generated.

A year later, the Ontario Department of Health’s report told a different story:

  • 32 people had been hospitalised with probable hepatitis.
  • 30 of them were serum-hepatitis cases (27 probable, 3 possible), and every one of those had used drugs intravenously. Only 2 were probable infectious hepatitis.
  • At Women’s College Hospital, 24 of 25 hepatitis patients admitted that summer had injected amphetamines.

The cluster was among people injecting speed, not the acid-and-folk crowd that took the blame.

Watching the scene

Toronto’s Addiction Research Foundation studied the Village as it happened. Its 1969 report, The Yorkville Subculture: A Study of the Life Styles and Interactions of Hippies and Non-Hippies, was prepared from a researcher’s field notes.

An open notebook and a pencil beside a cup of coffee on a small café table, a car and street lights blurred through the window.
The Addiction Research Foundation’s 1969 report was prepared from a researcher’s field notes. Illustration by Shroomverse, AI-generated.

The end of the Village

The hepatitis panic is generally treated as the beginning of the end. Rochdale College, a new free university at Bloor and Huron, took in Villagers from September 1968 (read about Rochdale). Between 1968 and 1970, developers tightened their hold, police drug arrests rose, and speed and biker violence grew. Through the 1970s, Yorkville became an upscale shopping district. A 2025 City of Toronto heritage study notes that developers used the counterculture “as a rationale for development”.

A narrow street of Victorian brick cafés in grey daylight, deserted, with chairs stacked inside the windows.
After the hepatitis panic the crowds fell away, and through the 1970s Yorkville became an upscale shopping district. Illustration by Shroomverse, AI-generated.

One more chapter: October 1969

On 17 October 1969, Canada’s federal drug inquiry held a public hearing at the Penny Farthing. Read about the Le Dain Commission in Toronto.

Read and watch further

  • Stuart Henderson’s book Making the Scene (University of Toronto Press, 2011).
  • Henderson cites two National Film Board films shot in Yorkville: Christopher’s Movie Matinee (Mort Ransen, 1968) and Flowers on a One-Way Street (Robin Spry, 1968).

SOURCES

Walk it: the self-guided Psychedelic Toronto walking tour, with a route map and nine stops.

Keep reading.

This is a history page. It isn’t medical or legal advice. Last checked .