Decades

It's interesting how one's life seems to be defined in decades. I was born in the middle of a decade so I get to decide whether to slide back five years or to leap ahead at some convenient point. What I remember of the 1940's can really be compressed into a handful of glimpses, some a little hazier than others. The 1950's are really a jumble of moving and school. Moving and changing continents, cities, languages, houses and progressing, more or less, through a variety of schools. The 1960's though is where life started to get interesting.

The 1960's defined a confidence and competence in many things. High school was zooming  to an end with a scholarship in football to SFU. Early in the decade, I learned to drive - fast. I was competent to build a house, build a boat, work with men in manly jobs. And the sixties was such a great time for emerging from the cocoon of parents and school - rock and roll. The Righteous Brothers came to town and Aretha Franklin. Elvis came and then the Beatles. In the US, black Americans marched for human rights. In the late '60s, folksingers came to coffee houses and started to set the stage for the folksingers of the '70s.

There was a decade within a decade, 1965-1975, that was defined by the Vietnam War. To Canadians it was a war whereas across the line it was a police action. In Canada we first saw American involvement in the pages of the National Geographic where advisors were helping the South Vietnamese. This soon escalated to fighting troops being sent over, and not just from the US, Canadians and Australians were to be found there as well but more as adventurers than representatives of their countries. It really wasn't until the end of the '60s, 1968 and 1969, that youth started to protest the war as immoral and young men began to evade the draft by coming to Canada. And flower power started in the late sixties. I saw Hair in 1969 in San Francisco and lots of hair in Haight-Ashbury. I met a young guy with a back pack on a tram in downtown San Francisco who later showed up at the Canadian border with my name as a reference.

The 1970's was the decade of my generation but it started in deadly ernest when in May four student protesters were killed by the National Guard at Kent State. Imagine, student protesters killed for practicing free speech. Universities closed across the country as students protested. Canadians travelled to Washington, DC to protest as well. Nevertheless, huge optimism reigned. Canada had a young, intelligent Prime Minister in Pierre Trudeau, who married a girl from my generation and from my university. The hippie movement, and it was a movement more than a fashion because deep philosophical and spiritual ideas from previous generations were found wanting and were tossed aside, spread rapidly around North America and the world. The baby boomer generation had arrived.

The decade of the baby boomers reaching adulthood was not without difficulties. An immoral (to this generation) war was still in full force. Over 58,000 young Americans and  millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Lao would ultimately perish. The previous generations had difficulty understanding hair, bell bottoms, patches, protests, anti-government, anti-big business, flower power, free love, sit-ins, be-ins, love-ins, pot, grass, weed, LSD, and media is the message. In spite of the inevitable clashes with parents, government, police and generally any authority, the 1970's was a time of unbounded optimism. This was a time of back to the land; Greenpeace; ban the bomb; when the revolution comes; M.A.S.H.; The Waltons; Joni Mitchell; Joan Biaz; Bob Dylan; Maria Muldaur; Carole King and James Taylor; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Simon & Garfunkle. This was also the time of Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Jim Croce, and Janis Joplin. There were the Smothers Brothers; Laugh-in with Goldi Hawn; the Band and Pink Floyd. Anything was possible and we really could do anything.

The decade of the '70s, however, ended with nary a whimper. Long hair had become collar length to match the business suits. Free love had become taking care of the kids. The following decades, 1980's, 1990's, 2000's belonged to other generations. Oh yes, the boomers still affected the tide of affairs in North America but they were no longer a movement. They were all too busy making ends meet. Big business and big banks took over. Now, in 2011, when Occupy Wall Street could use the energy of that whole generation of boomers, where are they? If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.