Sunday, May 17, 2009

Peace off!




Maybe this is what Prince was on about when he sang, When Doves Cry.

One hundred of these doves (presuming they were doves) were released from their pens to commemorate Youth Day on Sunday, August 6, 1967, at the Expo 67 outdoor stadium, Place des Nations.

The crowd had a flocking good time ... for a while. But nobody thought about what doves do after you let them go. (Who cares? - Chimples) They just want to go home. And they want to eat. And, peaceful fowl that they are, they don't fight back when hunted and pecked by nastier winged critters.

So that's what happened. The 100 endangered North American doves (only an estimated 150 remained in the wild) flew away, to the thundering applause of thousands of onlookers. But then the birds just landed on makeshift perches all around the stadium, having not a clue about what to do or where to go next.

Days later, they were stil haunting the place, swooping down on people in hopes of birdy num-nums or any handouts. Here they are seen, still shifty and confused, four days after the gaffe.

The SPCA got in on the act. Its director told the Youth Day organizers, "You kids better round 'em up and bring them to me for care." The yutes retorted that the birds were nothing but "light coloured pigeons" and told the SPCA to "Forget it!"

On second thought, maybe this was what Prince was on about when he sang, "Poo-poo rain."

2 comments:

  1. Typical selfish attitude of the long-haired sanctimonius hippies. One moment saying "Peace, Man!" and in the next saying "To Hell with the birds, Man!". Their offspring are what has fueled America's worst fad -- tattoos.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael Black11:21 am

    August 6, 1967 was also the day the Grateful Dead came
    to town. They did a free concert at Place Ville Marie
    in the morning, the books say they played 3 songs. They
    also say somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000 were in
    the audience.

    Then they went over to play at Expo, as part of
    a regular concert series. Attendance was free,
    the Dead got paid. The books record they played
    3 songs there too, and then the crowd became
    unmanageable, it built up and the cops tried
    to control it. They may not have even finished
    the last song.

    The PVM show was apparently a last minute addition,
    the Dead being asked to do a free show based on
    them doing free concerts back home. The Jefferson
    Airplane were along, actually the headline act,
    the two having played five days at the O'Keefe
    Centre in Toronto.

    It was the only time the Grateful Dead played
    Montreal. They would have in 1970 on the Festival
    Express tour, but the Montreal concert was cancelled
    (something about Drapeau worried about what might
    happen). There was talk in 1987 that Donald K. Donald
    would bring them here, but in the end that never happened,
    apparently there was concern that the audience wasn't
    there, and the border would limit how many Americans
    would come up.

    Michael

    ReplyDelete

Love to get comments! Please, please, please speak your mind !
Links welcome - please google "how to embed a link" it'll make your comment much more fun and clickable.