All Roads Lead to Wells: Stories of the Hippie Days

by Susan Safyan

In the late 1960s and ’70s a small group of idealistic young women and men, self-described as “volunteer peasants,” moved to the tiny town of Wells in British Columbia’s Central Interior. These hippies, with their waist-length hair and handlebar moustaches, long paisley skirts and gumboots, rusted cars and worn sofas, brought with them a Canadian version of the continent-wide back-to-the-land movement, the sexual revolution and the privilege of personal freedom. All Roads Lead to Wells tells the story of these young settlers, their migration, their values, the unexpected friendships forged between the town’s old-timers and newcomers and the inevitable clash–occasionally violent–of generations and cultures.

Built during the Depression, Wells nearly became a gold-mining ghost town like nearby Barkerville, but thanks to the influence of the “back-to-the-landers” it has evolved into one of BC’s renowned arts-based communities. All Roads Lead to Wells tells their earthy, poignant and revealing stories.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 21, 2012

Reviews

[George Ilsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The format of this book is great for pictures, and there is a treasure trove of photographs here.

The editor includes many different voices and opinions and at times the results overlap. Better, I suppose, to err on the side of inclusion. The only thing better would be to include one of the famous sticky buns for every reader.

I have a slight connection to a remote northern town, which used to be a mining boom town (Dawson City, Yukon). Many times reading about Wells, I thought, hey, that's a lot like Dawson, filled with interesting and resourceful characters, living in log cabins. (One difference - winter in Wells means much more snow. MUCH MORE snow!). Wells certainly sounds like a special place, but there are a handful of other small towns that share some of the same features. Whenever I mention Dawson, for example, almost everyone I meet has some kind of story (for example, "my parents met there", "I lived there for two summers" or "my childhood friend was born there"). I don't think all small towns are like Wells or Dawson (for one reason, most small towns have relatively stable populations), but there are these special, resilient, captivating towns in Canada, which have tried with various degrees of success to reinvent themselves as arts centres. Wells is one of the success stories, and if you don't know the town, this book is the road that will lead you to it.

[Christian Fink-Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most small town stories I’ve read harp on about close-minded locals, but the focus of Safyan’s book is the expanded minds: people who, in the 1970s, came from all over the country to forge a new kind of society based on “back-to-the-land” ideas, and values of tolerance and diversity and a smidge of LSD. Naturally, the experiment had its hiccups, but the idea of young people banding together to create a freer, fairer, and certainly more *entertaining* society, seems more timely than ever. It’s hard not to get caught up in the struggles and cheer on the successes of the many eccentric characters that Safyan brings so vividly to life.

Occasionally, the book brought to mind certain episodes of Northern Exposure in that the landscape becomes a central character as well as a backdrop to the experimentation and goofy goings on. But unlike N.E., Wells is a real place full of real, fascinating people. More than once I found myself wishing that I had been a part of the adventures and I can’t help thinking that the world would be a better place with a lot more hippie towns like Wells.

Highly recommended.

[Rob Klettke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the subject matter, this book is a bit of an outlier. The stories that are shared in this book haven't been collected into narratives that have a beginning, middle, and end. These are collected conversations, remembrances, snippets on a theme, that are supported with illustrative photographs. Altogether, they describe a time, an area, and a way of life that is completely foreign to me. And for that reason it is interesting. I've heard of these places, and possibly, I've been to a few. But not at the time that is described in this book, a time of free-spiritedness, experimentation, and explorations of the myriad meanings of "community". It's an interesting history, remembered and retold. I've never read anything like it.