For those who did not live through the experience of the Sixties, it is often difficult to comprehend this tumultuous period. Even those who lived through the era and have studied the Sixties have wrestled with its deeper meaning. While the Sixties’ ultimate “meaning” remains elusive, there can be no doubt that the period’s transformative effect upon Canadians – culturally, politically, and economically was immense. From arts and architecture to politics and protest, the decade has attained near-mythical status, leaving an undeniable influence on virtually every aspect of Canadian life. The images, sounds, and tastes of the decade remain an indelible part of our own twenty-first-century experience, a large part of our collective DNA, and a
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When did “the Sixties” really begin? The year 1960 marks the calendar beginning of the decade, but the era’s explosion into consciousness as something new, something different, something dramatic is more often remembered symbolically. Perhaps it was the election of a romantic Camelotesque president south of the border, or the seeming end of innocence symbolized by that president’s murder; or the screaming arrival of the Beatles. An era of so many memories, its beginnings are difficult to constrict to any single date or event. Similarly, there is no obvious terminus to the decade. The powerful generational influence of the baby boomers – who came of age in the sixties and whose demographic, cultural, and political influence is still shaped in so many ways by this experience – begs the question of whether this remains the “endless decade,” a nostalgic, never-ending summer of 67’. After all, the many totems of the period – the music, the protests, the clothes, the style – remain seared into the collective memories of the generations that have come after the baby boomers. There remains a fist-shaking refusal to let go of the era in many aspects of our life. At the same time, the passion and irreverence of the decade ended imperceptibly and quietly, and lamentably seems to have been lost forever. So much happened between the screaming that accompanied the Beatles to the quiet surrender of the Weathermen that it feels more reasonable to think of the period as a series of memory mileposts, instead of some unbelievably short span of
When did “the Sixties” really begin? The year 1960 marks the calendar beginning of the decade, but the era’s explosion into consciousness as something new, something different, something dramatic is more often remembered symbolically. Perhaps it was the election of a romantic Camelotesque president south of the border, or the seeming end of innocence symbolized by that president’s murder; or the screaming arrival of the Beatles. An era of so many memories, its beginnings are difficult to constrict to any single date or event. Similarly, there is no obvious terminus to the decade. The powerful generational influence of the baby boomers – who came of age in the sixties and whose demographic, cultural, and political influence is still shaped in so many ways by this experience – begs the question of whether this remains the “endless decade,” a nostalgic, never-ending summer of 67’. After all, the many totems of the period – the music, the protests, the clothes, the style – remain seared into the collective memories of the generations that have come after the baby boomers. There remains a fist-shaking refusal to let go of the era in many aspects of our life. At the same time, the passion and irreverence of the decade ended imperceptibly and quietly, and lamentably seems to have been lost forever. So much happened between the screaming that accompanied the Beatles to the quiet surrender of the Weathermen that it feels more reasonable to think of the period as a series of memory mileposts, instead of some unbelievably short span of