The Beatles’ North American tour took them to Toronto for two concerts on September 7, 1964. Anne Spear, St. John Ambulance Corps Superintendent, anticipated that Beatles fans would need first aid assistance. She met with Toronto Police to determine what role would be appropriate for St. John Ambulance. She assigned four St. John Ambulance volunteers to Toronto International Airport (as Pearson International Airport was called) and four volunteers to the King Edward Hotel, where the Beatles were staying. Fifty volunteers were sent to Maple Leaf Gardens – the venue for both concerts.
In the early morning of September 7, 1964, over ten thousand young people crowded onto the airport’s tarmac to see the Beatles arrive in Toronto for the first time. Beatlemania had crossed the Atlantic, and screaming crowds of (mostly) teenaged girls had greeted them at the 14 previous stops in their North American tour. Toronto was no exception.
The Beatles, flying from Detroit, landed in Toronto at 12:15 am. Police officers and a chain-link fence separated the Beatles from their fans. As the fans pushed themselves against the fence, 36 of them fainted from the excitement, and the police passed them over a barbed-wire barricade to St. John Ambulance volunteers, who treated them.
The Beatles went to the King Edward Hotel, where thousands of teenage fans looked for them. St. John Ambulance increased its squad at the hotel to 10 people. They stayed all night, treating overexcited teenagers in ambulances.
Although the Beatles were to give their concerts in the evening, the next group of St. John Ambulance volunteers found hundreds of fans at Maple Leaf Gardens as early as 11:00 am, when they reported for duty. St. John Ambulance set up aid stations inside the Gardens, offices, washrooms, and anywhere where they could find space. They equipped themselves with large pails of ice cubes and face cloths.
The Beatles gave their two concerts later that night. Again, the scene was filled with screaming, hyperventilating teenagers. The temperature inside the Gardens reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). Many concertgoers were stricken with heat.
A concert attendee, Stephen Freedman, who was 12, remembers, “Then you’d see the St. John Ambulance guys. You’d see two guys lifting girls above their heads and then passing them along toward the exits to take them to the nursing stations. It was like you were in a war zone. But I was in heaven.”1
In addition to using ice cubes and face cloths to keep the patients cool, St. John Ambulance volunteers also used cold compresses and fed oranges to starved fans. They also discovered that if the teenage girls were told that they would miss the whole concert if they didn’t stop crying, the girls would quickly recover.
While the concerts went on, large crowds of fans without tickets gathered outside the building. St. John Ambulance treated hundreds of fans outside the building for the same symptoms shown by the fans inside.
The Beatles concerts of 1964 were not the only time St. John Ambulance had to treat young rock music fans. On April 2, 1967, eighteen thousand screaming teenagers watched the Monkees at Maple Leaf Gardens, and again, St. John Ambulance treated the ones who fainted.
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1 Menon, Vijay “When the Beatles Came to Town”, Toronto Star, September 5, 2014
