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Welcome to Resisterville

Welcome to Resisterville

American Dissidents in British Columbia

by Kathleen Rodgers

Published by: University of British Columbia Press

Imprint: UBC Press

200 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm, 12 b&w photos, 1 map

Paperback
9780774827348
Published: November 2014

£24.99

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Hardcover
9780774827331
Published: May 2014

£79.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Between 1965 and 1975, thousands of American migrants traded their established lives for a new beginning in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. Some were non-violent resisters who opposed the war in Vietnam. But a larger group was inspired by the ideals of the 1960s counterculture and the New Left and, hoping to flee the restrictive demands of their parents' world and the pressures of city life, they set out to build a peaceful, egalitarian society in the Canadian wilderness.

Even today, their success is evident, as values like equality, sustainability, and creativity still define community life. This fascinating history draws on interviews and archival records to explore the root causes of this bold migration and its role in creating a region that continues to be a hotbed of social and environmental experimentation. Welcome to Resisterville is both an important look at an untold chapter in Canadian history and a compelling story of enduring idealism.

Foreword

Prologue

1 Welcome to Resisterville

2 Identity and the American Migration

3 Taking Root: Brokering Friends and Allies in the West Kootenay Counterculture, 1965-73

4 Acting Together and Resisting Together: Building a Countercultural Haven, 1968-79

5 "We Were Even Stranger than Other Strangers": Conflict, Contestation, and Boundary Negotiation in the Formation of the West Kootenay Counterculture, 1968-79

6 The Birth of Environmental Consciousness and the Rise of the Environmental Critique, 1973-91

7 Leadership, Legacy, and Reconciliation

Conclusion: Forging a Long Tradition

Appendix

Notes

References

Index

Kathleen Rodgers is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa.

Deftly combining interviews, local newspaper reports, and archival and personal documents, Welcome to Resisterville is an exciting, original book that will appeal to a broad audience. It tells the intriguing story of the migration of American war resisters to BC, the welcome they received, and the vibrant counterculture that they helped form. - Jim Conley, co-editor of Car Troubles: Critical Studies of Automobility and Auto-mobility Kathleen Rodgers's sociological study of the impact of American Vietnam-era exiles on the creation of a countercultural haven in the West Kootenay Valley is a fascinating account of modern immigration history...Rodgers's study provides future scholars with a rich and complex body of material to better understand a whole range of changes to Canadian society that ensued in the aftermath of yet another American invasion. - Kevin Brushett, Royal Military College of Canada (British Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 29 No. 2, Fall 2016)