Gastown Riots, Vancouver, 1971
‘Gastown Riot’ took place after riot police waded into a large crowd of people smoking cannabis.
On 7 August 1971, Vancouver’s Gastown neighborhood was turned into chaos. Police riding horses charged crowds, indiscriminately bashing at peaceful protesters with batons. Of the about 2,000 protesters, 79 were arrested and 38 were charged in one of Vancouver’s bloodiest and most infamous riots.
It was a mess. Mounted police galloping on sidewalks, pedestrians scattered in all directions. Gangs of young people throwing bottles and rocks at police officers. Police hitting people with batons. Ambulances, injuries, and pools of blood marked the streets. Young men laying on the streets with women screaming in grief, others are dragged into waiting police vans.
How did it all go so wrong?
Prior to this otherwise lovely day, the alternative newspaper Georgia Straight and the Youth International Party (Vancouver Yippies) organized a smoke-in to protest against drug laws and a police raid that happened a year earlier at a local youth hostel.
But on this lovely Saturday, 7 August 1971, less than a hundred young people assembled to smoke pot, play music, and hang out at Maple Tree Square at 8:30 pm. By 10 am, Sunday the next morning, almost 2,000 thousand people could be seen hanging out. This was an alarming situation for the more conservative-minded parents and Sunday churchgoers. This 1971 smoke-in protest became the climax of a conflict waiting to happen. A tension-filled the air. It was a rubber band waiting to snap.
Inspector Robert Abercrombie, the senior police officer in-charge at the scene, gave the young people two minutes to leave in a command. When this was ignored, he ordered four of his horseriding officers to go into move the crowd. This was not going to end well, you could feel it in the air.
If you didn’t know, plainclothes police officers are sometimes found who act as provocateurs among crowds to incite resistance. We know for sure the young people began to throw rocks and bottles. Then the police ran into crowds wielding batons. Some of the people caught up in the riot were tourists with children. This is how the riot started, but this is not how it began.
The early ’70s were a transformative time for Gastown, British Columbia. The hippie counterculture was everywhere, influenced by Americans avoiding the Vietnam war draft moving to Vancouver. The hippie counterculture influenced the ideas and lifestyles of Vancouver’s younger city life. The Yippies (or Youth International Party) were a political group based on hippie ideals, which was popular among many of the city’s well-educated youth. Gastown was also a cheap place to find rent — today, it’s an affluent neighborhood. However, many of the older residents didn’t welcome the noise and pot use, as well as the public nudity — keep in mind, Vancouver still has nude beaches.
The long-haired hippie wasn’t always welcomed. Discriminations over various sorts did happen. In 1968, for example, The Hudson’s Bay Company became the first major business to ban hippies from its area restaurant. Management said that hippie customers didn’t spend enough and lingered too long, and the other customers complained.
To figure out how the 1971 riot started, we have to go to 1970, when Operation Dustpan began. The Vancouver Police raided a temporary youth hostel at Jericho Base, home to hundreds of hippies refusing an eviction. Police in riot gear forcibly removed them with wailing batons, leaving many injured and homeless.
The public backlash against the police actions in the Gastown Riot had lasting effects. “The cops were beating up people in restaurants, and tourists, and the backlash in the report was so negative that I don’t think (the police) ever got violent with us (Yippies) again,” as Peter Prontzos, one of the original organizers of the Gastown protests, told the Vancouver Sun in 6 August 2021.
In the past, police officers would roughly move protesters in Granville. But after Gastown, the police weren’t violent as a force. In the end, a couple of police were demoted and one protester was sentenced to four months in jail for throwing a brick. The main organizers, Ken Lester and Eric Sommer, were never charged. Even Mayor Campbell was made to leave.
“It was always supposed to be about fun,” said Prontzos. “It was never about confronting the police or whatever.” Today, we remember the Gastown riots in a two-story-high mural by artist Stan Douglas called ‘Abbott & Cordova, August 7, 1971’ at Woodward’s Complex.