Toronto
Nov. '69
When I reached downtown Detroit, I went into Hudson's department store and bought a
book. I picked the cheapest, thickest, book I could find, The
English Philosophers From Bacon To Mill. With cowboy boots hanging
around my neck and carrying a suitcase, I made a lot of people smile
(even laugh) as I made my way to Canada.
With $150 in my pocket, I bought a round trip bus ticket to
Toronto. The guy at the ticket counter told me that Immigration
wouldn't bother me if I carried a round trip ticket. It was midnight when I arrived in Toronto. I was sitting in the bus station, sipping coffee, wondering, "Where the
hell am I?" I had arrived in Toronto, but in reality, I hadn't gone
anywhere. The bus station was as depressing a place as I had ever experienced, but the thought of the ice-cold street was even worse. At the counter, two freaks sat next to me. One was leaving on a bus to Sudbury while the other was just keeping
his friend company. When the cat left on the bus, the other dude
took me to Yorkville, Toronto's hippie district. Once on the Strip,
I started asking around for a place to crash. I was told that the
Diggers, a house set up as an emergency crash pad, would let me
sleep there.
When I arrived at the Diggers, the coordinator of the house told me
I could stay at the house for three nights, after that I would be
considered dead weight. After I was clear on the rules, the cat
softened up a bit. Before our conversation ended, he told me he was
a draft dodger from Chicago and had lived in Toronto for two years.
I told him I was also dodging the draft, and probably would
immigrate to Canada. He gave me some addresses, and then he showed
me the community room.
I sat in the empty chair with eyes closed. There was a dude sitting
across from me reading a book and two other dudes were sitting in
the far corner having a conversation. I was beginning to relax when
an upset chick walked in the room. She immediately started talking
to the cats in the corner of the room. She had just come from the
Strip where she was shooting speed with a guy she had just met. When
she was hitting him, the needle disengaged from the syringe and went
up the dude's arm. Apparently, they were shooting excellent speed
because when she wanted to drive the cat to the hospital he wouldn't
go (he didn't want to ruin his high). He told his distraught partner
that if he lived (you died if the needle ends up in your heart) he
would go to the hospital in the morning. She wouldn't take no for an
answer, though, so she started to drive the guy to the hospital
anyway. On the way to the hospital the dude made her pull over, and
when he got out he had to step over a woman crumpled on the
sidewalk. The woman on the sidewalk also needed help since she was
sitting in a pool of blood. The chick in the car wound up taking the
woman to the hospital instead of the dude. According to the chick,
the sidewalk woman's distraught husband kicked her in the crotch,
and she was pregnant. The husband then split, leaving the woman
lying in the street. After listening to this conversation I was, at
first, skeptical, but after living in Toronto for a while, I found
these less than fun facts easy to believe.
Toronto was a "speed city." Everybody on the street did speed. I
never did understand how people got hooked on the needle, but in
Toronto I met people who would mainline anything. I met girls who
mainlined ejaculated sperm just to see what would happen. Some
drugees, after the veins in their arms gave out, shot up in their
feet, ankles, legs, neck, and tongue. The headline in Toronto's main
newspaper read, "20,000 Estimated On Speed," that pretty much said
it all.
As I got to know more of the people, it seemed everybody at the
Diggers had a story to tell, but the chick who told the mainlining story still stood out. Her backstory was that three months earlier she got out of a Newfoundland penitentiary, after serving two years. Upon release, she started shooting speed
and only now was she coming off the drug. Her first night at the
Diggers wasn't too bad, but her second night was pure hell. One of
the two people looking after her went to a free clinic to get some
downs (Secinal). Roshdale, the building where the free clinic was
located, was an experimental treatment center set up by university
students to help people on drugs. Doctors were on staff, but the
students did most of the work. The cat came back from Roshdale with
a handful of downs and gave two pills to the chick. After she calmed
down a little he gave her another one. I suppose, after a week or
so, she would be mainlining speed all over again. Kicking the habit
in an environment like this was probably impossible.
After a day of walking the streets and trying to figure out what I
was going to do with the rest of my life, I decided to check out the
addresses in my pocket. I figured, "What the hell, if I like Canada
and Canada likes me then I guess I'm home!" The next day, I went to
the House of American Exiles to see how to make Canada my permanent
home. This place was a refuge for American draft dodgers and
deserters. This was also a place where you could get free clothing,
food, and make arrangements for a place to stay. The information I
was after though, was not available here, for that kind of
information I had to go downtown to where a branch of the House of
American Exiles had their legal counseling. Upon arrival, I found
the place busy and had to wait my turn. When my turn came, I quickly
found out that Canada didn't give away residence cards to just
anybody. A grading system was in place, a system based on how
productive you would be for Canada. After my assets were counted, my
production potential was next to nil.
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