Making the Scene is a history of 1960s Yorkville, Toronto's countercultural mecca. It narrates the hip Village's development from its early coffee house days, when folksingers such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell flocked to the scene, to its tumultuous, drug-fuelled final months. A flashpoint for hip youth, politicians, parents, and journalists alike, Yorkville was also a battleground over identity, territory, and power. Stuart Henderson explores how this neighbourhood came to be regarded as an alternative space both as a geographic area and as a symbol of hip Toronto in the cultural imagination.

Through recently unearthed documents and underground press coverage, Henderson pays special attention to voices that typically aren't heard in the story of Yorkville - including those of women, working class youth, business owners, and municipal authorities. Through a local history, Making the Scene offers new, exciting ways to think about the phenomenon of counterculture and urban manifestations of a hip identity as they have emerged in cities across North America and beyond.

Stuart Henderson is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of HIstory at York University.

Stuart Henderson's profile page

• Winner, Clio Prize (Ontario) awarded by the Canadian Historical Association
• Short-listed, Canada Prize in the Humanities awarded by the CFHSS

‘Stuart Henderson has provided a richly layered history of some of the people and cultural trends of Canada’s 1960.’

Canadian Historical Review, vol 94:02:2013

‘Making the Scene presents a rich variety of contemporary and retrospective depictions woven together with more general ruminations upon the nature of the place, performance, and projection onto the screen of wider popular culture that was, at the time, Canada’s preeminent “hip” neighbourhood…This capably documented and artfully told account of hip Yorkville in the 1960s makes an indispensable contribution.’

Canadian Journal of Sociology; vol 37:03:2012

'Making the Scene is a crackling good read... Henderson brings historian's eye for detail to the proceedings and also a socio-anthropologist's penchant for primary research, making Making the Scene a compelling and stimulating read... A detached, non-sentimental and objective account of Canada's most lively countercultures and the impact that resonates to this day.'

Popmatters: July 12, 2011