Atlantis, Rites of Spring, Toronto, 1996.

The Atlantis rave company , run by Don Berns, DJ Iain and Big Claudio Dynamite was one of the largest rave companies in Canada in the mid 90’s. Atlantis was famous for throwing events in interesting spaces like the CN tower and the Toronto Island Airport. Rites of Spring happened at an old theater on Danforth Ave. near Pape that is now a fitness club. Tribe had a photo booth set up in the balcony seating area, and this is where I met Vera, who is a close friend to this day.

Kat Club VIP Pass by Mychol Holtzman, 1993.

Mychol Holtzman was an event promoter in Toronto as well as the gossip columnist for TRIBE Magazine in 1993.  This VIP pass was for a weekly event at the Kat Club on Colborne Street in Toronto that featured deep and tribal house sounds in the lower level of the club with DJ Kevin Williams. The VIP pass was made with glow in the dark paper and cut and laminated at a Kinkos copy shop in Toronto, where most early Toronto promoters produced their event flyers. Mychol told me he was inspired to make the moving and shaking VIP pass after seeing fishing lures at Canadian Tire.

Flyer Kids, Polson Street, Toronto, 1998.

I found these two sitting in the dark next to a box of pHryl flyers at the large warehouse space on Polson that later became a club.  Found them by the soft glow emanating from the three glowsticks taped to the dude’s hat. I like this photograph. So calm and peaceful, even in the midst of  full audio mayhem and the thousand people dancing all around them.

MC Flipside working the party, Toronto, 1998.

Beacon of positivity. Killer MC. Talented DJ and Producer. Old Friend. MC Flipside working the room . MC Flipside and other MCs added another dimension to Jungle and Drum and Bass Events. Working together with the DJ on decks (these were vinyl days), they helped shape the mood of the crowd, elevating it and encouraging a deeper participation with the music.

Chill Out Room, Toronto, 1998.

Many of the larger raves in Toronto had chill out rooms; places where ravers could go to decompress, talk, rest, or cuddle. They were  places where you could avoid the higher BPM music at the party. A DJ playing a chill out room would spin ambient, slow, beat-free, meandering, calming tracks. Chill out rooms were usually completely dark, or lit with very low light – a lava lamp for example, a black light, or even a simple string or two of Christmas lights taped to a wall.

You would never see any of the room when you were there, so it was always a joy to get the film back from the lab to see what my flash strobe had illuminated.

That looks like Justin, but I could be mistaken.

David Morales, Stereo Launch Party, Montreal, 1998.

I’ve always liked David Morales. His knowledge of disco and house music is immense, his remixes are some of my most favorite tracks. His remix of De La Soul’s track Saturdays (De La Soul – A Roller Skating Jam Named ”Saturdays” (6:00 A.M. Mix)), is a perfect example of his skill as a master remixer.

So I was especially happy to be in the booth with him for most of his set at the Stereo launch party in Montreal in 1998. Shooting, listening, watching. I’d seen him play often, but I’d never seen anyone play on 1200’s with gold plated tonearms before, so that was a first. About midway into his set I watched David put a Jocelyn Brown accapella on the far turntable and turn off the power. Spinning it to speed with his finger, over and over, dropping vocals into an instrumental house track playing on another, powered, turntable. Holding the perfect pitch of the vocals with his spinning finger. I had never seen anything like it.  After about 2 minutes of doing this live remixing he turned to me and said “Wow, I’ve never done anything like that before!”

Book signing at the smart bar, Toronto, 1998 .

I always thought it sweet that ravers would ask each other to sign notebooks. “Sign My Book!!!”, was often yelled over the music and you couldn’t really refuse. I usually just signed “Thanks for being a part of TRIBE, AlexD” because this is something I really meant. Others would draw complete artworks, self portraits, drop tags, maps to other groups of friends in the venue, or even complex drawings of the event itself. It was a way to memorialize the vibe of the event but also a way to it take the rave home later to enjoy again while listening to the latest rave cassette tapes.

Breaks DJs at the El Mocambo, Toronto, 2000 .

A lot of great DJ talent in this photograph. Marty McFly, Robb G, D-Monic, Big League Chu… There was an excellent breaks scene in Toronto that year. This was peak rave, the big parties were huge, but the breaks parties were smaller and had a much tighter vibe. Even the grotty old El Mocambo could sparkle with breakbeat dancers when the local breaks DJs spun their vinyl.

Rave Dancefloor, Toronto,  December 1998.

Like it used to be. 

I immediately recognize Darcy. She always smiles like this when she dances. The guy in the very front with the water bottle: the music is so good it is almost too good to bear. The big wooden bead necklaces. Hands in the air. A whistle or two. Zero phones. You know it. This is us.

This is bin 1 of many, filled to the brim with photographs from tribe magazine. I shot these slides and negatives  during the birth of electronic music in Canada between 1993-2003.

I’ve waited many years for the technology to properly capture these images digitally – to do them justice. With the advent of new technology from our friends at Nikon, this is now possible. 

We’re putting these photographs from tribe into a special gallery area of our sister site, tribe.ca. Once this exhibit is over,  we will make this exhibit area available for content from other Canadian artists and  photographers.

It was a time before phone cameras, before digital photography. Most event promoters didn’t even allow attendees to bring cameras into the events, which is why photographs from this period in Canadian history are exceedingly rare. But Tribe, as the magazine of record for the electronic music and DJ community in Canada, was given unrestricted access to every event.

The scene wasn’t covered in any real way by the mainstream or alternative media of the day. They had no awareness of this culture for well over a decade, until it was nearly over.

But what a fantastic period in Canadian history!

The conditions were often harsh. Extreme hot or cold temperatures, abandoned toxic industrial Toronto warehouses, hallways filled with muscled sweaty shirtless ‘roid guys covered in Vicks, bloodthirsty mosquito-filled swamps, terrarium-like humidity,  disco nappers inside bass bins, dripping ceilings, deep mud, fire trap walk-ups rammed beyond capacity with floor joists creaking and swaying at 128 BPM. Love by the cases, happy smiling faces.

I took my cameras in and captured everything I could.

There are a lot of photographs from tribe. We have thousands of images. I will slowly release them here, one at a time. Please tell your friends about this page. Bookmark it. If you share these images on social media, please do not remove our watermarking, and please direct people back to this URL in your shares.

The URL to share is https://tribe.ca/legacy.

I’ve not seen these images since I shot them. To be honest, for years I was worried I hadn’t captured the culture on film in an adequate way.  I figured the photographs might not be good enough.

But now I see I did my most true and honest work as a photographer, at the exact instant my subjects and readers were experiencing the most true and honest part of their lives. I’m re-discovering the humanity, the cultural beauty, and the lasting impact of this period on Canadian history. As I hope you will, too.

We were young once, weren’t we? And wasn’t the music fucking amazing?!!

With love,

alexd (Alex Dordevic)
CEO | Editor| Publisher | Photographer | Raver
Tribe Magazine