Eyewitness to History: The 1981 Teenage Head Ontario Place Riot
[Thanks to Mike for sending this to me! – AC]
It was the summer of 1981. NOW magazine became Toronto’s ‘other’ voice, and a concert at Ontario Place became Toronto’s Rock n’ Roll statement to the world. It really started early in the day, three boys and a girl, sitting in the Downsview Dells Park up near the Keele Street and Sheppard Avenue intersection.
For all intensive purposes my name is ‘Jupiter’, and the others, well, lets call them John Doe, Harry Doe and Sue Doe. You have to understand, we’re talking about the incitation of a full scale riot, nothing less. A Rock n’ Roll riot. One that made front page news in over ninety North American newspapers.
The afternoon started out simple enough for four Toronto teenagers with nothing to do. We headed into the park carrying a twenty-four box of beer, a bottle of whiskey and so on, not unusual in that part of the city throughout the seventies and early eighties.
It was a good enough day, and when your young, with nothing to do, and you’ve consumed a bit of this and that, it’s always a beautiful day. Now the afternoon was lingering on, and youthful exuberance being what it is, we were getting bored. I can’t honestly recall who made the suggestion, perhaps we heard something on a radio, but we decided we would head down to Ontario Place for one of the free concerts going on that day.
Walking up to the Keele & Sheppard plaza, we dropped by the now defunct ‘Classic Billiards’, the local hangout for the party crowd of the area. Asking around if anyone was interested in joining us, we found we’d be heading down alone. We chipped in our resources and bought ourselves a little more liquor. We hopped on the old faithful ‘Red Rocket’ and made our way to the subway.
Heading down to the concert we were a little agitated as we realized we should have left earlier. No matter, we’d get there regardless.
We were getting antsy on the ride down. There’s nothing worse than being half out of your head and trapped in the confines of fluorescent lights and sober crowds. We departed the train still maintaining our sanity, but barely, and headed to the ‘Place’.
Arriving at the West entrance to the park, we found the gates locked shut, and the Police telling us to go home, the concert was full.
We didn’t take the news well.
