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Reviewed by:
  • Welcome to Resisterville: American Dissidents in British Columbia by Kathleen Rodgers
  • Nancy Janovicek
Kathleen Rodgers, Welcome to Resisterville: American Dissidents in British Columbia (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 2014)

Welcome to Resisterville contributes to the growing sociological and historical literature about the legacies of “the long sixties.” Using interviews, alternative and mainstream local newspapers, and archival records, sociologist Kathleen Rodgers seeks to understand how the migration of thousands of American who moved to the West Kootenays transformed these rural communities. Raised in the region, Rodgers is – by her own admission – more interested in why the West Kootenays has become a unique countercultural haven than she is in historical and cultural transformations in rural British Columbia in the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing exclusively on American immigrants who identified as young New Left activists when they moved to the region, her goal is to explain why and how the idealism born in sixties New Left movements endures today.

The book begins with a discussion of the 2004 controversies about the proposal to build a monument to Vietnam War resistors who sought refuge in the region and two reunions of war resistors held in the Slocan Valley in 2006 and 2007. These events attracted deserters from the Iraq War and incited outrage from American supporters of the war who called for a boycott of the region. Local politicians and elites withdrew their endorsement for the monument because they were concerned that it would have a negative impact on tourism, one of the area’s most important industries. The debate upset those who were part of this migration and who have been engaged in political, economic, and cultural activities since their arrival. The rejection of the commemoration of their role in recent historical developments seemed to be a revival of the anti-Americanism, which they hoped had disappeared. This controversy sets up Rodgers’ central question: “how and why did the trajectories of individual immigrants … become transformed into an enduring collective and political project?” (14) The book is primarily concerned with the formation of a group identity by the region’s American exiles and how this collective identity produced countercultural political mobilization that was distinct from existing Canadian movements.

Informed by key sociological theorists of identity formation, especially Wini Breines’ conceptualization of New Left prefigurative politics and Manuel Castells’ social movement theories of collective identity, Rodgers explains how the influx of Americans to the West Kootenays created countercultural political movements and institutions in the region. The first two chapters explore the relationship between identity, immigration, and activism. A disproportionately large group of immigrants in this rural region are American-born: 25 per cent compared to 5 per cent in British Columbia as a whole according to 2006 statistics. Heightened anti-Americanism in the 1960s and 1970s, which was the reason for at times violent confrontations between newcomers and long-term residents, compelled many to conceal their identity as war resisters and Americans. Despite the reluctance of some interviewees to foreground their American identity as the reason for their political activism, Rodgers contends that nationality and ethnicity are core identities that are redefined through the process of migration. The close proximity to other exiled Americans in the sparsely populated and isolated region helped them to recognize their shared experience as immigrants. Participation in voluntary agencies and political protests in the region forged their common identity as [End Page 282] New Left activists who had honed their political skills in American social justice movements. While some downplayed the influence of American identity on their politics, others explained that their political dissent was based on a long tradition of American political engagement and to resistance to state decisions that did not meet their needs. For them, American and Canadian forms of political engagement are inherently different. New Left disillusionment with social, racial, and economic inequalities in the United States informed their decision to leave and shaped their approach to politics in their adopted home.

The West Kootenay counterculture was not merely an “American ‘branch plant’ of the California counterculture.” (89) Subsequent chapters explore how countercultural politics were produced through brokering alliances with communities who shared their values and through conflict with those who...

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