Hurricane by James S. Hirsch

Author:James S. Hirsch [James S. Hirsch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007381593
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

* Absent was DeSimone, who had died in 1979. Humphreys was now a Superior Court judge in Passaic County, but he testified at the remand hearing.

10

THE INNER CIRCLE OF HUMANITY

AS A STUDENT at the University of Toronto in the 1960s, Rory “Gus” Sinclair gave money to draft dodgers and marched on the American consulate in Toronto to protest the Vietnam War. He demonstrated against campus recruiters from Dow Chemical because the company made napalm. He studied Marx. After graduating, he hitchhiked to the Yukon and worked in an asbestos mine, then made one of those trips around the world that is only possible when you’re young and fearless and broke. He scraped through China, India, and Europe, reading a dog-eared copy of an Abbie Hoffman book along the way. When he returned in 1969, he thought the time was right to create something that would bring meaning to his life. He wanted to start a commune.

Toronto nourished a vibrant counterculture centered on the small downtown neighborhood of Yorkville, which served as a magnet for student dropouts and American draft dodgers, miniskirted flower children and self proclaimed visionaries. There were plenty of drugs and free love and music, and it was easy to believe that the world could be remade on a wave of spirituality and enlightened thinking. Sinclair tapped into this heady optimism, seeking friends and college acquaintances who might be interested in a communal social experiment. The house would run on good socialist principles. Money would be put into a pot, and no one would go hungry. A rundown row house was rented in downtown Toronto in the midst of porno shops and liquor stores. In the first year, like-minded radicals drifted in and out of the house, but a core group eventually formed. It was an unusual mix of rich kids and poor ones, straights and gays, Catholics and Protestants, the nephew of a Nazi officer and the son of Jews who survived Bergen-Belsen. They were energized by the protest and politics of the era: they opposed the Vietnam War and despised any form of imperialism or colonialism; they distrusted government, scoffed at religion, and demonized parents; they believed that poverty was immoral, racism was a scourge, and business was corrupt.

While the commune’s antiestablishment views may have attracted its eight to ten members, the group was held together by a charismatic woman who became its leader.

Lisa Peters was petite, with a square face and long dark hair.* She was not especially pretty and was certainly not feminine. She smoked and cursed and spoke loudly. Her grammar was poor and she shunned makeup and was proud that she never wore a dress for a man. She hated to have her picture taken because she was self-conscious about her nose. She had few material possessions and little money. What she had, however, was unflinching self-confidence, a riotous laugh, barbed opinions, and fearlessness. “I’d go toe-to-toe with God,” she would say.

Her dramatic life story enhanced her mystique. As she told other

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