Company of Young Canadians
Canadian youth program (1966–1977)
The Company of Young Canadians (CYC) was a short-lived Canadian youth program sponsored by the federal government, which existed from 1966 to 1977. It was designed to be run autonomously without government direction.
It generated considerable controversy shortly after its founding: coordination with volunteers in small communities was poorly organized, and several of the youth involved in the program were prominent political activists. Among other things, it was accused in 1969 of harbouring terrorists by municipal officials from Montreal, including Mayor Jean Drapeau. These claims were never verified. In March 1970, its administration was taken over by the federal government, and in 1977, it was formally abolished.
The CYC was a co-sponsor of the National Film Board of Canada's Indian Film Crew in 1968, the NFB's first foray into Native-made filmmaking.
Notable alumni of the CYC include Gilles Duceppe, Georges Erasmus, Barbara Hall, Phil Fontaine, David DePoe, Michael Valpy, and Ian Hamilton (Canadian writer).
References
Further reading
Hamilton, I. (1970) The Children's Crusade: The Story of the Company of Young Canadians. Toronto: Peter Martin Associates.
“Company of Young Canadians” enters the record as canadian youth program (1966–1977). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Company, Young and Canadians can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5155563. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1977, 1969 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Company of Young Canadians” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.