From Someplace Else

The decade between 1961 and 1971 was a time of tumult; of innocence lost,
gained, and lost again. During those years, Ralph Osborne moved from the
confusions of being 17 to, briefly, believing that at 27, he knew everything.
It is, he says, "my version of the Divine Comedy - more comedic than divine."
From Someplace Else is an often hilarious, occasionally tragic account of the
exploration of boundaries, inner and outer, through a time of free love and
psychedelic adventure. And because the paths between Heaven and Hell, good and
bad, and up and down are not linear, this book is necessarily an account of
one man's first trip around the circle. Osborne's Holy Grail is identity. His
quest, in which he sets out to learn "a small piece of the puzzle - one little
thing I could know for certain," takes him from a working-class tenement on
the east coast, through the privileged confines of Westmount, west to the
cleansing air of the prairies, and east again, to the stoned-out beginnings of
Toronto-the-hip where he becomes general manager of the infamous Rochdale
College. From Someplace Else is a journey driven by the ever-relevant
question: to be, or to become? It's also the slightly surreal description of
the thin line between simplicity and squalor.