50 Years Ago, Mark Vonnegut Looked to B.C. for a New Frontier

50 Years Ago, Mark Vonnegut Looked to B.C. for a New Frontier

Mark Vonnegut wasn’t the only college-age American heading north to British Columbia in the early 1970s. Hoping to avoid the Vietnam draft and searching for a utopian way of life outside the conformity and materialism of Nixon’s America, he and some fellow expatriates bought land north of Powell River and established a communal farm. After a few months, though, he began to suffer a severe mental illness that would lead to two stays in a psychiat…