Punk's First Wave at OCA[D]

"The Dishes courted a new hip, fashionable audience. A vibrant contemporary arts scene had emerged in Toronto during the first half of the seventies, through the emergence of the artist-run centres: institutions like A Space Gallery and Art Metropole, the latter opened by the influential Toronto- based conceptual art collective General Idea. Mostly started by artists’ collectives as spaces to create and exhibit challenging, contemporary work, the arcs helped make Toronto a world leader in progressive art."

"Still the first men on the moon, the Dishes began a slow takeover of the entire Queen Street strip. What began at the Beverley quickly spread a few blocks west; Peter Pan, a new restaurant opened by Ball and local artist Sandy Stagg, almost immediately became another landmark and vital meeting place for the blossoming new community. A mixture of artists and musicians, the restaurant’s clientele would become a transformative force in the city, beginning a creative migration to a previously derelict part of Toronto."

"Paul Robinson: We were playing for friends at OCA. There were no venues that would book us. There just wasn’t any infrastructure like there is today for anything that was independent or alternative to what the mainstream music in Canada was."