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“That’s where it all started,” said David Bracewell, owner of the Booksmyth bookstore in Nelson. “To deal with itinerant people, they turned to the dog ban.”

As yesteryear’s flower children became parents, and then homeowners, even entrepreneurs, what might have once been a utopian live-and-let live philosophy hardened as a new generation of dropouts drifted into town, sullying a downtown so charming that it once served as the small-town set for Steve Martin’s 1986 quaint rom-com Roxanne.

Since the transients so often brought along dogs, and since banning humans wasn’t possible, Nelson’s former free spirits turned to prohibition. But locals now think the rules they passed to make their town more tourist-friendly are backfiring. In an era where tourists now want their vacation places to be dog friendly, a debate has begun over whether it’s safe, again, to let the dogs out.

“It is affecting tourism in this town,” said Noreen Lynas, owner of the Cottons Clothing Company store.

“And lots of people who travel with dogs also have money.”

Although Nelson got its start as a mining boomtown, the roots of its modern day incarnation were established nearly a century later. In the 1960s, the region had become a haven for disciples of the free-love movement, many of them Americans dodging the draft by fleeing 60 km north of the border. By the 1970s, back-to-the-landers had carved out about a dozen communes in the local forests.