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John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool by Greg Marquis

2022; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 55; Issue: 113 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/his.2022.0023

1918-6576

Dave Hazzan,

Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

Reviewed by: John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool by Greg Marquis Dave Hazzan Marquis, Greg – John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool. Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., Ltd., 2020. 248 p. What does it mean to be cool? That's the first question Greg Marquis asks in his new study of the 1960s, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada was Cool. The second is, was Canada cool in 1969? He figures yes, and much of it has to do with the age's greatest superstar, John Lennon, his artist wife, Yoko Ono, and their three trips to Canada that year. Lennon and Ono's first trip to Canada was in May, the famous Montréal "Bed-In" for peace, where the couple stayed at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel for seven days. Marquis describes how The Bed-In caused pandemonium in the Canadian media, always thrilled to find themselves the centre of world attention. But for Canada's peace activists, it was a dull joke. Marquis notes that except for radical Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, Lennon and Ono had "no contact with Canada's peace movement and concentrated on the Canadian and international media" (p. 37). He also notes that "despite its message of universalism," it was overwhelmingly White and English, with only a single Black journalist present, and no French contribution at all (p. 55). When it came time to tape "Give Peace a Chance," the Bed-In's singular event, it was not with local peaceniks and draft dodgers—it was with American celebrities, such as Timothy Leary, Tommy Smothers, and Dick Gregory. Lennon and Ono were back in the summer, this time to perform at the Toronto Pop Festival, the first time Lennon would officially perform without the Beatles. The Plastic Ono Band—as John, Yoko, and their musicians dubbed themselves—opened for The Doors to a packed Varsity Stadium. Though Lennon would go on to release the concert as an album, Live Peace in Toronto 1969, he admitted later it was not his best performance. He was stoned on what he had hoped was heroin, but was likely PCP or something similar, a "powder" from Little Richard's entourage. Regardless of its quality, the Toronto Peace Concert was a monumental event in pop music history, because it was there that Lennon made his final break from the Beatles (p. 78). This was also the era of the federal government's Le Dain Commission into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, a Commission of Inquiry set up by the Trudeau government to examine the explosive rise in cannabis and other drugs in the late 1960s. According to a source interviewed by Marquis, Lennon and Ono spoke for over five hours with the Le Dain Commissioners on a train from Toronto to Montréal, explaining why soft drugs were good, and hard drugs bad. That Lennon and Ono met with the Le Dain Commissioners is well-documented. That Lennon smoked a joint with them, as he claimed he did, is still conjecture. The third trip to Canada compounded the farce of the first trip. Following Woodstock, Lennon and Ono decided to plan a "Festival for Peace" in Canada. They stayed at Rockin' Ronnie Hawkins's house outside the city, had extra phone lines installed for their non-stop media interviews, and left the Hawkins family with thousands of dollars in long-distance bills. Again, there was no attempt to liaise with any actual peace organizations, though Marquis writes they did have time to take Hawkins's Rolls-Royce to Le Château on Yonge Street, and spend [End Page 213] $800. The concert never happened. The Beatles broke up, and Lennon appeared to have a mental breakdown, releasing songs with lyrics such as "fuck the sixties" and "fuck the Beatles." Lennon and Ono repeatedly described Canada in glorious terms. Marquis writes how, before they left London on their third trip, "John informed the media that Canada 'was one of the key countries in the new race for survival'" (p. 133). But Marquis also notes that how much Lennon really knew about Canadian foreign policy is up in the air. What seems...