Visit To The CANADIAN Hog Farm

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"During the 19th century, influenced by the ideas of such men as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, and as a reaction to the industrial revolution, a number of communal experiments came into being. They were based on Utopian philosophies and without exception were short-lived."

This is a point much brooded over by the more serious members of today's communal movement. They realize that like ecology, communal living is a delicate balance. It is more often destroyed from within than from without.

As Barnie phrases it: "Put any group of people together and they seem naturally to establish a pecking order. To check or overcome this is the prerequisite for a successful commune.

"Most of the people I have talked to in the movement are trying very hard to do this. Because, for all their diversity, they have one thing in common—no confidence in the present society or its ability to survive."

Unconsciously, I think, Barnie has become the liaison man between the commune residents and the local inhabitants. He has done the job so well that when I talked to the local people, I was unable to find one hostile reaction.

A member of the Ontario provincial police detachment defined the commune people as "fine citi zens who give us no trouble".

Mr. Hilary Jones, the reeve of Barry's Bay, put it this way: "When these people first came up here we had some apprehensions. We thought that there might be trouble with drugs and bad influences on our young people, but it hasn't worked out that way.

"While, to be frank, I'll say that we don't mix with them, it's been live-and-let-live both ways. Being country folk here, I think we understand a little better than some what they're trying to do. I admire them for it in a way."

The commune people are making an attempt to reverse, for themselves, the industrial and electronics revolution, the very age they are the children of. Whether they will succeed, only time will tell.

*Copyright © 1968 Metric Music Co. Inc., New York, N.Y.

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