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Thumbing a Ride
Hitchhikers, Hostels, and Counterculture in Canada
Linda Mahood (Author)
9780774837330
Hardback, published 1 August 2018
344 pages, 29 b&w photos
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.64 kg
Thumbing a Ride explores hitchhiking's resurgence in Canada during the 1970s, when the then-teenage Mahood took to the road, thumb stretched out, seeking rides. In her concise but wide-ranging study, the author focuses on the mobility of young Canadians, their willingness to take risks, and travel as a rite of passage. Summing Up: Recommended.
In the 1920s, as a national network of roads and youth hostels spread across Canada, so did the practice of hitchhiking. By the 1960s, the Trans-Canada Highway had become the main thoroughfare for thousands of young baby boomers seeking adventure. Thumbing a Ride examines the rise and fall of hitchhiking and hostelling in the 1970s, drawing on records from the time. Many equated adventure travel with freedom, but a counter-narrative emerged of girls gone missing and other dangers. Town councillors, community groups, and motorists called for a nationwide clampdown on a transient youth movement that they believed was spreading hippie sensibilities and anti-establishment nomadism. Linda Mahood unearths good and bad stories and key biographical moments that formed young travellers' understandings of personal risk, agency, and national identity. Thumbing a Ride asks new questions about hitchhiking as a rite of passage, and about the adult interventions that turned a subculture into a moral and social issue.
1 Get your Motor Running: Risk, Ritual, and Rite of Passage Travel 2 Thumb Wars: Adventure Hitchhiking 3 Rucksack Revolution: Quest in the Age of Aquarius 4 Cool-Aid: The Transient Youth Movement 5 Crash Pads: Blue-Jean Bureaucrats versus the Canadian Youth Hostels Association 6 Head Out on the Highway: Stories from the Trans-Canada Highway 7 Car Sick: Hitchhiking Dos and Don'ts Conclusion: The Vanishing Hitchhiker Eulogy Notes Index