Off the Streets and into the Fortress: Experiments in Hip Separatism at Toronto’s Rochdale College, 1968–1975

Abstract

Toronto’s Rochdale College (1968–1975) represented something much more than simply a new venue for countercultural experimentation and identity in the centre of English Canada’s biggest city. It served as a bridge between the hip emphasis on public performativity that characterized the Yorkville scene of the mid-1960s and the more private hip separatism of the early 1970s. The symbolic association between Rochdale and impenetrability was central to both Rochdalians’ self-identification and its perception by outsiders; there also were connections between Rochdale and the broader trend toward hip separatism in the years after 1968.