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Originally Posted by Vin
Agree, looks much better then. I'm sure cleaner too as homelessness wasn't such a big issue at the time, and the west coast drug culture was just in its infancy. Heck, even people were dressed way better lol.
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Actually, the west coast drug culture was well established before this picture. "By 1970, Vancouver was already associated with the illegal drug world, the results of decades of press, police, and expert pronouncements. The city also became identified as a major location for the West Coast counterculture. Marijuana was mentioned in the late 1950s by the Narcotic Addiction Foundation of British Columbia as an experimental drug for “aspiring artists,” and by the late 1960s it was preferred over hashish.[85] Echoing his counterparts in Toronto and Montreal, Vancouver’s Mayor Tom Campbell announced his antipathy to hippies, whom he accused to trying to “destroy Canada.” The police responded by arresting hippies for loitering and charging those who passed marijuana joints around as “traffickers.” Vancouver was a favourite destination of transients, who by the late 1960s and early 1970s were joined by a new group: young Canadians hitchhiking to the West Coast. Starting in 1967, Vancouver was identified as Canada’s hippie capital, and the Kitsilano Beach area “Canada’s Haight Ashbury.” [
source]
There was more drug-related activity in Gastown and Kitsilano, which was why Mayor Tom Campbell, real estate developer and anti-hippie crusader, sent the VPD into Gastown in 1971, resulting in the 'Gastown riot' recreated in the Woodwards atrium artwork.
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at 5:58 the clock is still at the corner of Granville and Hastings. Video from Library and Archives Canada
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