CANADA

Canada, stretching from the United Sates Of America in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north, is filled with vibrant cities including massive, multicultural Toronto; predominantly French-speaking Montreal and Quebec City; Vancouver and Halifax on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, respectively; and Ottawa, the capital. It’s also crossed by the Rocky Mountains and home to vast swaths of protected wilderness.

From 1965 to 1973, the United States entered full-scale into the hideous Vietnam War. Peace-loving Americans flowed northward, fleeing conscription. Canada became saturated with American poets, peace activists and pot growers. These illegal refugees were unable to hold legal employment, and so many turned to growing cannabis. Many settled in British Columbia, bringing with them innovative indoor growing techniques. While beat poets puffed pot in crowded Toronto nightclubs, back-to-the-land hippies lay naked on the sand and huffed herb in places like Vancouver’s nudist Wreck Beach.

Communes were most prolific on the Western Coast, but the most famous of all was Southern Ontario’s Church of the Universe, founded in 1969. Church members professed marijuana to be the sacred Tree of Life.

NELSON

Nelson  is a city located in the Selkirk Mountains on the extreme West Arm of The Kootenay Lake in the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Known as "The Queen City", and acknowledged for its impressive collection of restored heritage buildings from its glory days in a regional silver rush. Nelson is one of the three cities forming the commercial and population core of the West Kootenay region, the others being Castlegar and Trail.

Nelson, better known as Canada's pot capital is a bohemian town that has managed to keep its carefree spirit intact. A number of quaint local watering holes and coffee shops are scattered in between heritage structures. It surely is unquestionably beautiful, with snow clad mountains circling it proudly. Macleans magazine has included Nelson on its list of ten Canadian places to see in 2014, calling it a “Modern-day hippie Sanctuary.”

“It was a place to get away from typical parental expectations and to hang out with like-minded friends,” wrote Katherine Gordon in her 2004 book about the region, The Slocan. Here, between the Selkirk Mountains and the Kootenay River, the responsibilities of adult life would never find them.

Although Nelson got its start as a mining boom town, the roots of its modern day incarnation were established nearly a century later. In the 1960's, the region had become a haven for disciples of the free-love movement, many of them Americans dodging the draft by fleeing 60 km north of the border. By the 1970's, back-to-the-lander had carved out about a dozen communes in the local forests.

By the time the new wave of hippies hit Nelson in the ’80s, the original flower children had children of their own, having happily traded in their socialist retreats for single-family homes. A sobering recession shuttered Nelson’s main employer, a sawmill, forcing the freewheeling town to buckle down and find ways to drum up new business. Local leaders started on a campaign to spruce up the community’s Victorian buildings in hopes of attracting tourists to their scenic spot on the map.

But instead of wealthy travelers, the city was stormed by unemployable youths, following the same trail of their hippie predecessors. By the end of the decade, the new wave of anti-establishment kids had taken over, striking up hack-sack games and drum circles in the main street, while their unchained dogs soiled Nelson’s sidewalks.

The dog ban was part of a sweeping series of bylaws targeting the young nomads. Within a span of a few years, hack sack, skateboarding, rollerblading, and unauthorized music were all outlawed on Baker Street, Nelson’s historic main strip.

Joussard, Alberta, Canada: Location of the "NORTH COUNTRY FAIR", Each summer on June 20-23 (sometimes on the 19th, depending on which one falls on a Friday) there is a Summer Solstice Celebration held in this little northern Alberta town. Hippies and free spirits alike come from all over to enjoy this wonderful enlightening experience of live music, new age work-shops, dancing and of course the artisan market. Situated beside the Lesser Slave Lake, there are many great places to camp on and off the fair site. It's like taking a step back in time, if only for one memorable weekend a year, to see beautiful people join together and celebrate the longest day of the year. The North Country Fair is surely a huge gathering of the free.

San Francisco may receive all the attention when it comes to the hippie movement, but Vancouver has many charms. Besides, a city with some of the most liberal marijuana policies and a distinctly multicultural vibe deserves to be on the list.  There is a lost of nostalgia here about the 1970’s, and it is readily apparent in the groovy Kitsilano district where tie-dye is ubiquitous and old hippies with long hair and ponchos still wander about the streets. It’s also the birthplace of Greenpeace.

See You Soon...On Another Famous Hippie Location

Until Then...NAMASTE...

#Trotterhipp