Canada's Drugged Up Dystopia (1969)

Remember back in the year 2000 when you'd feed your brat kids their breakfast pellets, head to work under the city's weather controlled dome, your computer overlords only knew you by your nine digit identification number, and you'd end your day fantasizing about a life before computers?

The January 18, 1969 Montreal Gazette ran this most peculiar comic, chock full of hilarious expositional dialogue and dystopian delights. 

We follow the futuristic misadventures of George Daedalus, also known as Daeda 928 502 467, in the year 2000 AD. George lives in Oshtoham, Canada's second largest city -- which I'm guessing is a combination of the cities Oshawa, Toronto and Markham-- and works as a travel agent. George lives his life surrounded by technological wonders like robot servants, videophones, moving sidewalks and 3D hologram walls, but we come to find out that he's really just not that happy. The last panel shows George taking drugs and using a computer to escape his reality. Boy am I glad I don't live in that future!*

*Is there an emoticon for nervous laughter?

Previously on Paleofuture:

• The Disease of the Future (1970)
• Going Backward Into 2000 (1966)
• Disaster Response Vehicle (1960)
• Moving Sidewalks by Goodyear (1956)
• Technology and Man's Future (1972)
• Communities May Be Weatherized (1952)
• Super-Metropolis Map of 1975 (1961)
• Drugs in 2000 A.D. (1970)

Comments

[Mathew]

Actually, Oshtoham is probably an amalgam of OSHawa (East of Toronto), TOronto and HAMilton (West of Toronto).
Ville Trudeau is probably supposed to represent Montreal, which in 1969 was still slightly larger than Toronto. I guess the cartoonists couldn't project that Toronto was soon to surpass Montreal as Canada's most populous city, despite the fact that Toronto had had decades of significantly higher population growth.

[Jason!]

What's a "travel agent"?

[Will Schenck]

What ever we do, we can't teach the computers to repair themselves...we just can't!

[colin]

Looks like they ripped a lot of stuff off from Brave New World.

[snippy]

@Colin

Hasn't our present reality also borrowed many of those ideas? ...and Orwell's?

[Mjc]

This is totally a fun one. Im assuming the issue of Toronto becoming a city of multiple cities had been debated for a while, as the GTA is made up of most of those component cities, I believe. And having worked here for a year now, I can totally validate the love of pellets for breakfast...

Thanks for finding this- this one is a lot of fun. Just one day though?

[cr0sh]

Ok - am I the only one seeing thin 1-pixel white lines in the this comic scan? If not, will this be fixed?

[Someone]

I for one welcome our new self repairing computer overlords.

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[computers aspen]

Thanks for sharing with us this interesting post, keep it up!