Thumbing a Ride

Know about the book -

Thumbing a Ride is written by Linda Mahood and published by UBC Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0774837365 (ISBN 10) and 9780774837361 (ISBN 13).

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.