“Feel-good nostalgia tells us that 1969 was the height of the hippie, warm-fuzzy era of peace and love, and that this week’s other 40th anniversary, of the Woodstock music festival, was its pinnacle: A moment where individualism, non-conformity and the creative impulse reigned, where repression was challenged and, in many ways, fell.

But that’s rose-coloured hindsight of a fractious time that unleashed demons as much as it seeded naïve idealism. The Cielo Dr. killings, and the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Feliz a day later, were as much a product of those times. No one embodies this dark flowering more than the murderers’ puppetmaster, Charles Manson. And his stamp on the culture is arguably deeper and more lasting than Woodstock’s.” (The Star, “Charles Manson Was The Real Face of 1969” by Murray Whyte, August 8, 2009).