Jamie Tennant Reviews Greg Marquis’ John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool
John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool. Greg Marquis. Formac Lorimer Books. $24.95, 248 pp., ISBN: 1-4594-1541-8
“The aesthetic of cool is a difficult concept to put into words. Think of the ‘cool kids’ in high school or film stars, musicians and writers, such as Samuel L. Jackson and singer Chrissie Hynde or novelist Jack Kerouac.”
Is it ever cool to call something cool?
As titles go, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool is kind of uncool.
Does the author use the word ironically? Sincerely? What does “cool” even mean? “Cool” isn’t just dependent on tastes and trends; it’s the epitome of a subjective adjective. One might argue that a better title would have been, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year the World Thought Canada Was Cool … But Canada Wasn’t Really as Cool as They Thought It Was.
In this new book, Greg Marquis, professor and history advisor at UNB Saint John, turns his historical acumen towards the subject of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In 1969, the enormously famous couple came to Canada for the first of three much-publicized visits. These visits led to some significant moments in pop culture history, such as the live debut of the Plastic Ono Band, the Montreal “bed-in” for peace and the recording Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance.” Marquis takes these moments and sets them into a much broader historical and pop cultural context.
“In the 1960s, no one was cooler than the Beatles,” Marquis posits, and he certainly isn’t wrong. What the world did not know is that the world’s coolest group was teetering on the edge of collapse. Drug use and internal strife were hidden behind a soon-to-crack veneer. Marquis’ book shows us that in some ways, Canada was in a parallel situation. The world considered Canada a cool cousin of the hot-headed U.S. The student anti-war movement reflected our progressive attitudes. Expo ’67 had recently focused the world’s attention on us. Even our prime minister, the fashionable and irreverent Pierre Trudeau, was cool.
Yet, as it was with the Beatles, not all was as it seemed. Some Canadians were forward-thinking, certainly, but reactionary conservatism was alive and well, especially among older, rural folk. Our reputation, however, was often based on the liberalism of young educated urbanites. By 1969, even Trudeaumania was on the wane. Yet the image of Canada as a progressive nation remained widespread.
Lennon and Ono had plenty of positive things to say about Canada on their three infamous visits, but the attention might have gone to our heads a bit. Lennon didn’t necessarily choose Canada because it was cool. He chose it because he was barred from entering the U.S., and his protests for peace would, at least, be happening next door to America, American people, and the American press.
Marquis doesn’t spend his time dispelling myths, per se; he’s mostly interested in telling an unbiased story and giving the reader a clear picture of the era. Lennon and Ono’s Canadian stays were inarguably important in pop culture history. “Give Peace A Chance” – a low-fi recording made in the suite at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel – is a Lennon staple and a legitimate Canadian connection to the story of the Beatles and its members. That song alone would make Lennon and Ono’s visit to Canada one of significance.
In John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool, Marquis shares some of the smaller details about Lennon and Ono that readers undoubtedly will find fascinating. If you’re not a Lennon historian, you may not know that Lennon spent some weeks living at Ronnie Hawkins’ Mississauga ranch and that, on board Lennon’s peace train, he and Ritchie Yorke (a journalist and major player in Ono and Lennon’s War is Over! peace campaign) snuck into China to promote the message of peace.
Many other details are of a more socio-political, Canadian historical nature, and as such, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Year Canada Was Cool may lose the interest of people who come to it only for John and Yoko. Still, it’s a fascinating overview of a remarkable time in western culture, and an even-handed overview of a cool – or “cool” – period of Canadian history.
Jamie Tennant has covered music and pop culture both locally and nationally. He is the Program Director at 93.3 CFMU FM and the host and producer of the literature program Get Lit. In 2016 he published his debut novel, The Captain of Kinnoull Hill. His new novel is tentatively scheduled for spring 2023.