Friday, July 09, 2010

Back-story –post 4 July 9

Rochdale was a free college located in downtown Toronto. The classes were free to anyone who wanted to attend. You just wandered in, found a class and attended. Now that was the premise; however once inside it was a different story. At the entrance to the college gate stood two burly biker/bouncer looking guys. To get past these guys you had to know someone inside. We happened to get a name from a friend who got it from a friend and so on. Once inside you would wander the hallways stopping in certain rooms where you could buy any recreational drug you desired. Marijuana of course was the big “hit” as well as other harder drugs. In other words it was the place to buy drugs. You would sit down in the dorm room, try the pot and if you liked it buy it and leave. Nobody seemed to care what was happening within the gates of Rochdale. It was a peaceful self regulated place, where you could take classes and yes they had a cafeteria and a garden as well as a library and all the things that make up a University.


I had my first cup of yogurt in the Rochdale cafeteria. I had my first tastes of Indian food while living in Toronto. I learned the bus and subway system and could travel all over the city. It was clean and safe but a long ways from home. After two years we got homesick and realized that to make a difference one needs to become absorbed in the system. Rebelling and fighting the system has never worked. To work from within, get involved, and vote although seemingly to conform was better than living in exile and rebelling against something we could not change from far away.

The problem was my then boy-friend and now my ex-husband was a deserter from the US navy, wanted by the US government. We could not just go back. So we contacted our families. My ex-husbands father was a career man in the Navy and still active. Although he was extremely upset at what we had done, he arrange for a military lawyer to speak with us. The lawyer told my ex-husband that we should get married and then return to the US. He should turn himself in peacefully. Our defense would be that I had thought I was pregnant and we did not know what to do so we ran away to Toronto.

So on July 25th of that year we stood before a justice of the peace, with two witnesses in Toronto Canada and got hitched. The next morning we boarded a bus for Maine. When came to the boarder we had papers which allowed us to cross into the U.S. without any interference. I remember the border guards’ looking at everyone’s papers and being so afraid that they would catch us. You see it would be in our favor to come back and turn ourselves in rather than be arrested by the border guards. We passed the test, re-boarded the bus and continued the almost 12 hour journey home. Once home…

Doctor Lynn

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1 comment:

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Thanks for the effort you took to expand upon this topic so thoroughly. I look forward to future post.
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