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About 6 people went out the windows either as jumpers or accidental falls and one accidental fall that might have been considered death by misadventure. I personally had to participate in cleaning up 3 bodies and witnessed 2 falls. The first fall was a woman in Dec. 1970 the 2nd was a fight where 2 men went through the elevator lobby windows on the 3rd floor. The fellow that landed on top lived, he crushed his adversary. After that incident we put railings on the elevator lobby windows. During this period any people our age were trying out different ways of living together as singles, couples, families and groups. The people I hung out with at the time were experimenting with co-operative and communal housing and businesses. Some of theses experiments went on for years and may still exist in one form or another. As a rule, there came the time when the individual, couple or family wanted to leave communal living. For a variety of reasons, they wanted their own space and decided to break away, change or go it alone. Some went to other co-ops or communes some lived a singular or family existence. Being a couple in a hippy commune had its challenges. I remember one meeting that was held in the 2nd floor lobby. It was called by a woman named Suki from one of the commune floors. According to her there was a young nymphomaniac going around the floors balling all the men and giving them a dose. The men were taking it home to their partners. Suki had gotten infected from her partner so it had to stop. At the public meeting nobody would confess anything. So, it turned into a he said she said venting row. With no proof of where the dose came from. But the Klinik verified a dose was going around that commune. Now the question was what will it take to get rid of it? The Klinik people gave a talk on group sex and passed around some prophylactics. Somebody said let’s get on with life and the meeting was over. Thus, were some of the tribal social concerns dealt with. In Rochdale, too many inexperienced people had a say in how things were to be done. Their logic was always personal based and had very little to do with protecting or making the group work. This attitude alone was a major force in dividing the building. It made it relatively easy for the receivers to get control of both the building and the building management. Not to mention that because of the rent structure the building could never make enough money to pay its mortgage let alone maintain it properly. When the Clarkson-Gordon Company took over as receiver things changed. The building went from free-wheeling to controlled free-wheeling. During the first year the Community Guardians security force put in by the receiver started taking stock of the building and what was going on. The Greenies named from their green uniforms were all ex police or individuals that didn’t make the force. Part of their game was to pin point who was who in the building. They didn’t know if there were guns and other explosive weapons in the building or not. They took bombs seriously because they were so easy to make and the building was full of draft dodgers. There were also some self-proclaimed Anarchists, Communists and Nazis. The deal struck with Rochdale negotiators was that the Greenies were not allowed to go above the 2nd floor. They hung around in the front lobby. From here they sussed us out as we came and went from the building. They were basically taking names and if they could, pictures of all of us. One of our most colourful residents was a fellow named Sidney Stern. He came into Rochdale in early 1972, before the receivers took over. Sid was a middle-aged man that had spent fifteen years in jail. When asked why he went to jail he told us his business was going out of business. One of his customers had turned him in and lied on the stand. Sid was a genuine charmer. He always dressed well and he always looked good. Even in a T-shirt and jeans he looked stylish. His smile was a solid wall of teeth. Sid very much reminded me of George Raft. The real-life gangster turned movie gangster from the thirties and forties. I told this to him once and we were friends from that point on. His story was that after WW2, when business was starting up again and cheap goods were becoming readily available, he would purchase, with promissory notes, whole shipments of anything available. Everything from cheap toys to household goods to household appliances. He would sell the goods to local Toronto up and coming entrepreneurs at a loss. He set up and ran a separate business for each supplier he worked with. He had a series of both sole proprietor and corporations going all the time. Sid would then tell the supplier he could not sell the shipment for the agreed price and offered a lower amount as payment. When the supplier refused the lower offer Sid simply went bankrupt to avoid paying the supplier anything. At this time the laws of Canada allowed for this. Business owners were not responsible for business losses and all they had to do was go bankrupt to avoid paying anything. He did this so many times that complaints were made and the authorities became aware of his routine. The alarm was sounded and Sid was set up as the fall guy by two of his biggest receivers of his illicit goods. These two big purchasers were becoming more and more famous in the city of Toronto. These entrepreneurs recognized the new found fame their businesses were coming into. Both of them wanted a clean slate. They no longer wanted to be tied in with Sid’s business activities. The heat on Sid was making him known and the authorities were snooping around their business activities. The Vice squad was on to them and it wanted a fall guy. Previous Exit Next |