The international literary world will soon have an opportunity to glimpse the unique world of northern B.C. in the 1970s through the words of Prince Rupert-based author Joseph Marvici.
Marvici is gearing up to present “The Longstock Chronicles,” his memoir about life in a small, remote community along the Fraser River in B.C., at the London Book Fair 2025.
Set during the rise of the back-to-the-land movement and the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s, it paints an intimate portrait of a time when idealism met the reality of life off the grid.
For Marvici, that meant moving to a tiny, isolated settlement called Longstock, where he and his wife lived for over two decades, surrounded by nature, tight relationships, hardship, and an ever-evolving community.
“There was a lot of hippies who moved in there at the same time I did, we had parties all the time, and we were always helping each other out with this or that thing,” said Marvici.
“When I first moved there, it was a different world,” he recalls. “There was no road, no power, no telephone. You had to depend on the river.”
It represents a lifestyle that today’s readers haven’t experienced, making it an interesting read.
In 1973, Marvici and his wife decided to leave Denver, Colorado in search of affordable land on which to live. As land prices soared in the United States, they looked northward for a place to escape urban life.
A man in Prince George told them about cheap rural land up in Longstock, an isolated community with a population that never exceeded 40 residents at its peak.
The community, accessible only by walking along the railroad tracks or by boat up the river, required self-reliance. The people who lived there, many of them hippies, were part of a campaign that sought to live off the land and away from modern conveniences.
Marvici purchased 161 acres for his family and recalls that his neighbours also owned large plots of land and lived at a significant physical distance from each other.
It wasn’t the easiest way of life, but for Marvici, it was everything he had hoped for.
“There was a real sense of community,” he said. “People depended on each other to survive. There were no locks on doors — if you weren’t home, someone might just help themselves to a cup of coffee and sit at your table until you returned. It wasn’t a big deal.”
The Fraser River was central to his everyday life. Whether fishing, picking someone up, or simply getting supplies, the river was the lifeline to the outside world. He remembers boating 16 miles downriver to reach the nearest town to make him reach his home for the first time when he arrived there.
“I came to Longstock with a horse, and eventually bought more animals,” he explained.
He bought goats, chickens, and even a cow. With a big garden, he could live pretty self-sufficiently.
“You had eggs, you had milk, you had cheese, stuff in the garden, your food bill was very, very low. You didn’t have to worry much about buying groceries,” he added.
They would pick up staples from Prince George once a month in the winter and twice in the summer. The community was almost fully self-sufficient.
“It was a rustic way of living, like something from an earlier time,” Marvici reflected. “Very few people have lived like this. You had to deal with the wild elements, the animals, and the unpredictable weather. And the river was always there — always part of your life.”
The isolation fostered close-knit relationships among the residents, and Marvici said neighbours always lent a hand when needed, even without asking.
“I was building my house, people showed up at random here and there to help out for the day,” he said.
They all hauled water and transported goods downriver together. Doing activities in groups was common.
One of the most memorable adventures Marvici had involved loading his truck, a heavy 1941 Dodge Power Wagon, onto two river boats to get it across the Fraser River. “I drove that truck up from Denver,” Marvici recalled. “When I got to Penny, the next town upriver, there were no roads, so I had to load the truck onto two boats, planked side by side, to ferry it across.”
“I had to be in [the truck] and hold the brakes. It was high above the water. It was nerve-wracking. I hadn’t done anything like that before,” he recounted.
But by the 1990s, the arrival of roads and power lines began to change the community. As more people moved in, the once tight-knit relationships started to fray, and the spirit of the back-to-the-land movement began to dissipate.
“It changed everything,” Marvici said. “The camaraderie evaporated. I had to start locking my doors, something I never had to do in the 17 years before that. It was a different kind of place after that.”
After selling the property in 2015, Marvici reflected on how much Longstock had changed during his 25 years there. The road brought loggers, new people, and new attitudes. It was still beautiful, but the way of life was gone.
He says it was a young man’s game—hauling water, cutting wood. For an older person, it got difficult. Marvici is now a resident of Prince Rupert and plays guitar in a band.
As Marvici prepares to share “The Longstock Chronicles” with an international audience, he has his fingers crossed for the future of his book. He hopes to secure a book deal from this opportunity.
He noted that around 1,500 to 2,000 books are presented at the fair, with approximately 100 ultimately resulting in a deal. This event brings together publishers, agents, and book representatives from around the world to discover new voices in literature.
He says it’s a unique story, and there’s not much like it out there, a way of life that’s mostly forgotten.
“It’s about it’s an era that people don’t write about too much. And also the back-to-the-land movement- It’s not written about much. Most of the rustic books are written about either the 1800s or early 1900s. But when you look back on this, it’s history. It’s not just about me, it’s about the whole history of the place.”
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