In the 1960s and early ’70s, thousands of youths were on the road, hitchhiking across Canada and the USA and travelling through Europe, living in rooming houses in cities like Vancouver and in communes in the country. Their individual stories played out on a canvas stretched across the frame of world events including Vietnam, Woodstock, Watergate, and the emerging environmental movement, often in a climate of idealism, protest, and anger.

The Rooming House follows several of these young men and women sharing an old home in Vancouver’s Kitsilano district, tracking their loves, losses, and wanderings through the diary entries of two of them. It is both a coming-of-age novel about disaffected and aimless young people and an exploration of the events of those years, complete with a soundtrack of rock classics and notes for readers who weren’t around then.

Michael Kluckner is a Canadian writer and artist. His early books on the history of Canadian cities, heritage, planning issues, and art, include Vancouver The Way It Was, Vanishing Vancouver, Paving Paradise, and British Columbia in Watercolour. He has won numerous awards, including the Duthie Prize, the Vancouver Book Prize, the Toronto Book Prize (short list), the Hallmark Society (Victoria) Award of Merit, and the Heritage Canada Medal of Achievement. In 1991 Michael was the founding president of the Heritage Vancouver Society. From 1996 until 2001, he was the British Columbia member of the board of governors of the Heritage Canada Foundation, and served as chair from 1998 to 2000. Michael chaired the Vancouver Heritage Foundation in 2002-3. He received the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002 for the contributions made, through books and volunteer efforts, to increasing awareness of Canada's heritage and culture.

Michael Kluckner's profile page