From Someplace Else: A Memoir

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Although the 1960s counterculture affected—and is attributed
to—spoiled suburban baby boomers, many of them are not from that
group. This is certainly true of author Ralph Osborne. He was born in
1943 to dysfunctional working-class parents who lived in a Saint John,
New Brunswick, tenement. After a stay in Montreal and a failed marriage
in Regina, he moved to Toronto’s Rochdale College in 1969, eventually
becoming its general manager.

Osborne’s perspective is a unique combination of 1960s naiveté,
Maritimes realism, and First Nations philosophy. These interacting
influences prevented Rochdale’s bitter realities— administrative
infighting and a takeover by major drug pushers—from turning him into
an embittered cynic.

One does not have to be a former Rochdale resident to appreciate this
memoir. Literati might enjoy Osborne’s account of his meeting with
cultural icon Leonard Cohen. Older Torontonians may catch references to
defunct local businesses, such as the Zumburger restaurant. Even the
most reactionary couch potato might be interested in the fact that Tanya
Roberts from the 1970s TV show Charlie’s Angels actually lived there.

Osborne recalls the famous 1960s cliché, “If you can remember them
you weren’t really there.” Happily, this “freak” has retained
enough brain cells to compile his own account of Canada’s cultural
revolution.