Spring 1969: Pierre Berton visits London, Ontario, and high school authorities go ballistic
For Maria Van der Velden
By 1969, even in conservative, homogenous London, Ontario, seismic changes were rumbling through the corridors of power.
In those halcyon days, I attended Oakridge High School where the 1960s zeitgeist had begun infiltrating, albeit on little cat feet.
One sign of the times in’69 was the invitation that someone in the Oakridge apparatus extended to the highly controversial media and literary personality, Pierre Berton.
For those too young to remember this obstreperous chap, Berton was renowned, even notorious, for his contentious views on religion (he was a self-professed atheist and virulent critic of organized religion); pot smoking (he was an advocate and an enthusiast); premarital sex ( he famously wrote in MacLean’s magazine that “he would not object if his teenage daughters engaged in premarital sex, saying he hoped that they had enough wisdom to use a comfortable bed instead of a dingy backseat of a car…”); gay rights (when homosexuality was still criminalized in Canada); and educational reform, propelled by “student power” (he was a whole-hearted supporter of the 1968 Hall-Dennis Report which foregrounded a child-centred approach to in-class learning).
Pierre Berton | The Canadian Encyclopedia
Hall-Dennis Report – Wikipedia
The Hall-Dennis Report | Foundations of Education
Berton was an intentional disturber of fecal matter, and his presentation at Oakridge caused an immense kerfuffle.
Indeed, the aforementioned fecal matter hit the proverbial rotor blades in the hallowed halls of our institution of higher learning after Berton urged the assembled students to challenge authority, including the primacy of teachers and administrators alike; question society’s shibboleths, while taking a stand against organized religion and the Vietnam war; and push for open classrooms, where both the arts and sciences could flourish and where the human rights of students were respected.
It was news to many of us students that we had any human rights or power.
Meanwhile, certain members of our school’s establishment were sent into conniptions by Berton’s attitude, approach, and provocative views.
Berton triggered one of our teachers, a mercurial gent whom we referred to as “Boom Boom Cannon,” to go ballistic.
“Boom Boom” spent a whole class railing against and disparaging Pierre Berton and lambasting the erstwhile Canadian icon for his views.
But the “damage” was done. Pierre Berton’s Oakridge jeremiad was both a sign of the times and a nudge for restive students seeking to throw off the straight jacket of convention in those long-lost days of political and social unrest.
Your friend
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
Born in 1940 and grew up in London. So many of your comments reflect my memories from the 50s. Left after Western in 1963 but back for family through the years. My parents were teacher but my father got a global bug and we moved to India. Seriously unreal for all of us but life totally changed and London was just an odd, sad memory. We each became globals as a family but you capture that tight world perfectly. The security and safety of a London early years let us explode into a risktaking approach to the world that allowed success and surprises. Thank you for your writings.
So kind of you to write and I am very glad you recognize memories in my little sketches.
Your life sounds so interesting!
Cheers!
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/