War Resisters author reading
December 04th, 2025
Author and advocate Joline Martin will be sharing stories from her book, War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War (Caitlin Press $26) on December 7, 2025, from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM, at Powell River Public Library, 100-6975 Alberni St, Powell River, BC.
Aboout the Author
Joline Martin is a founding member of the North Island Writers Conference, where she has served as chair for the past eight years. She has also served on the board of the Comox Valley Writers Society for ten years and is a member of The Writers Union of Canada. Her short stories have appeared in Island Writers Magazine and Comox Valley Collective, and her personal story is featured in the BC bestseller Gumboot Girls: Adventure, Love & Survival on the North Coast of British Columbia (Caitlin Press, 2014).
About the Book
Martin’s book profiles a dozen resisters who wound up on Vancouver Island, detailing how tens of thousands of young Americans crossed the border in the mid-1960s and early ’70s to escape military service in Viet Nam. These draft evaders and deserters, opposed to what they saw as an immoral war, sought refuge from a turbulent world.
The book highlights how these newcomers, who arrived often broke and desperate, established productive lives in Canada, surviving and contributing to their adopted communities from the Kootenays to the Gulf Islands. Martin herself was disillusioned with the US involvement in the war and left for Haida Gwaii, BC, in the early 1970s, where she found solace in the natural world and the power of community. 9781773861685
To read full review: https://bcbooklook.com/aint-goin-to-vietnam/
This is a most welcome book by Joline. Well done, and it will be on my reading list over the holidays. Is history repeating itself as many more Americans leave the crumbling empire behind? Their principled stance against war and dictatorship has always been welcomed by democratic Canadians.