What Happened to the Hippies From the ’60s? Hippies may still be found in bohemian enclaves around the world, while others settled down to have families but remained true to the hippie ideology through their lifestyle choices and community involvement. We have all benefited from the positive effects of this era.

The movement originated on college campuses in the United States, although it spread to other countries, including Canada and Britain. The name derived from “hip,” a term applied to the Beats of the 1950s, such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who were generally considered to be the precursors of hippies.

As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, the Beats and beatniks gradually gave way to a new kind of counterculture: the hippies, who actually preferred to call themselves “freaks” or “love children.” The hippies were much younger than the beatniks (they could even have been the Beats’ children) and had a much different …

July 22, 2004 — — More than 30 years ago, a few hundred hippies left California to start a commune in Tennessee. They’re still there, and they’re not the only ones. If you thought the communes all quietly faded away, you’re not alone.

Tofino

Hippies were part of the “baby boom” generation, born immediately following the end of the Second World War (see Baby Boomers in Canada). This demographic wave was significant enough to transform Canadian society; by the mid-1960s more than half of Canada’s population of 20 million was under the age of 25.

Hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Eastern philosophy, championed sexual liberation, were often vegetarian and eco-friendly, promoted the use of psychedelic drugs which they believed expanded one’s consciousness.

Many young people across Canada, accompanied by Americans rejecting the war actions of their own government, chose counterculture lifestyles, sometimes moving back-to-the-land on communes and attempting to live outside of the mainstream economy.

Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the Non-conformists of the 1930s, the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), followed by the globalized counterculture of the 1960s (1964–1974), usually associated with the …

Some of the earliest “hippies” were university students living in California’s Bay area. Many lived in an area of San Francisco called Haight-Ashbury, which became famous as one of the main areas for people looking to live the hippie lifestyle.