Opened in 1968, Rochdale College was an experiment in alternative student-run education and co-operative living in Toronto, Canada. Also known as the Rochdale Project, it was associated with Innis College, University of Toronto.

Co-operative Housing experiment

Rochdale was the largest co-op residence in North America, and the second co-op student residence opened in Canada. Rochdale occupied an 18-storey student residence at Bloor St. and Huron St. in Toronto. It was situated on the edges of the University of Toronto campus and near Yorkville, Canada’s hippie haven in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Rochdale took its name from Rochdale, England, where the world's first attempt at cooperative housing took place in the 1800s.

The college’s modern architecture was uniquely designed for communal living. Some areas were divided into independently-operated communal units of about a dozen bedrooms (called Ashrams), each with its own collective washroom, kitchen and dining room. Each unit was responsible for collecting rent and maintaining its own housekeeping. Other areas consisted of bachelor, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments. On the first and second floor were common areas used for socialization, education, and commercial purposes. The roof was accessible from the 18th floor and was used for sunbathing. Clothing was optional.

Educational ideals

In the late sixties, universities were a centre of political idealism and experimentation. Rochdale College was established as an alternative to what were considered traditional paternalistic and non-democratic governing bodies within university education. Conversely, Rochdale's government policy was decided at open meetings in which all members of the co-operative could attend, participate in debate, and vote.

It was the largest of more than 300 tuition-free universities in North America, and offered no structured courses, curriculum, exams, degrees, or traditional teaching faculty. It became a hot bed of free thought and radical idealism, in many ways resembling a tribal community.

Traditional professors were replaced by “Resource People” of various academic and non-academic backgrounds, who would lead informal discussion groups on a wide variety of subjects, as opposed to structured classes. A Resource Person of note was author Dennis Lee.

Students had complete freedom to develop their own learning process, much of which emerged from the shared community experience. The college included theatres for drama and film, and a ceramics studio. Students decided school policy and made their own evaluations.

Rochdale students where involved with various cultural institutions in Toronto such as Coach House Press, Theatre Passe Muraille , The Toronto Free Dance Theatre , and House of Anansi Press.

It was typical of the free universities not to award degrees and the University of Toronto did not offer degrees through Rochdale College, but anyone could purchase a B.A. by donating $25 to the college and answering a simple skill-testing question. An M.A. was $50, and the applicant could pick the question. A Ph.D. did not require any skill-testing question, and went for $100.

The Rochdale application also described its “non-degree:” “We are also offering Non-Degrees at comparable rates. A Non-Ph.D. is $25.00. Course duration is your choice; requirements are simple, we ask that you say something. A Non-M.A. is $50.00 for which we require you to say something logical. A Non-B.A. is $100.00; you will be required to say something useful."

Rochdale ran its own radio station called CRUD, with a bizarre assortment of music, talk and static. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission tried to shut the station down a number of times, but the dedication of its staff kept it on the air.

The Rochdale community was very tolerant, so it was not unusual for residents to wander nude or openly use soft drugs within its rooms and corridors.

A film buff named Reg Hartt was approached to find a bootleg copy of the porn classic, Deep Throat. When he screened it at the college, he charged $10 admission, but there was no charge for those who came naked.

Drug culture

By 1971, Rochdale’s reputation in the press was as "North America's largest drug supermarket" and it had also become a haven for American draft dodgers. The school had an unofficial alliance with the Vagabonds motorcycle club that controled the drug trade. The residents initially formed a security force partly because of the troubles caused by drug dealing; undercover police and hard drug dealers tried regularly to infiltrate the community. Ironically, the security force included members of the biker gang.

As nearby Yorkville became gentrified, much of Toronto's counterculture ended up at Rochdale. Rochdale’s educational focus and student population declined as the drug business increased because of non-student and non-resident crowds that were dealing in both hard and soft drugs.

With the increase in clashes with police, drug overdoses and drug related deaths, and the unwillingness of the wealthy dealers to pay the balance on the mortgage held by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, political pressure forced Rochdale to close in 1975. A number of residents refused to leave, however. On May 30, the last residents were carried from the building by police. The doors to the college had to be welded shut.

The building

The 18-storey tower that once housed Rochdale at 341 Bloor Street is now known as the Senator David A. Croll Apartments. Completed in 1968, it is the sister building to the Tartu student residence a short distance west across Bloor street. Designed by the architects Tampold and Wells (who had earlier constructed the Charles Street Apartments at Bay Street and Bloor Street), it is ironic that such as a hub of creativity and counter cultural ideology was housed within such a harsh, yet restained, concrete Brutalism.

As homage to its Rochdale days, the tower features the large and intriguing “Unknown Student” sculpture out front.

"Love it or loathe it, Rochdale College is hard to dismiss even 20 years after its closing." (University of Toronto Magazine, Spring, 1995, p.38.)