Hospital City

On March 2, 2004, Bernard Lord's Conservative government announces that the hospital in Caraquet, New Brunswick, will be converted to a community health centre. Considering the government's decision unfair, the people of the region rally to save the health care services to which they feel entitled. Despite their year-and-a-half-long struggle, the Hôpital de l'Enfant-Jésus is closed. In recording the chronology of the events, Renée Blanchar plunges into the heart of the action with an urgent need to speak out against injustice. The result is a very human film about solidarity. In French with English subtitles.

Uncle Bob is getting up in years, but manages quite well, thank you. Then an unexpected illness changes everything. Suddenly he's scooped out of his safe and familiar surroundings and deposited inside the foreign and chaotic world of the hospital. Here the once self-reliant Uncle Bob becomes vulnerable and dependent. Uncle Bob's hospital stay is fraught with difficulties. Day in day out he is inundated by a constant barrage of intruders, from the nurse who wakes him up to take his sleeping pill, to well-meaning visitors who bring him food he can't eat. As his hospital stay lengthens, Uncle Bob's spirits and health decline, and his old life becomes a distant memory. It isn't until one very special visitor reminds Uncle Bob just how much he is loved and needed that he finds a reason to get well. Uncle Bob's Hospital Visit is a charming look at the importance of cheer, hope and love in the healing process.

Nain is a remote Inuit community on the coast of Labrador that has existed peacefully for two hundred years. Now, one of the worlds largest deposits of nickel and copper has been discovered 50 kilometres away, at Voisey Bay. As commercial interests prepare to exploit the regions natural resources, Nain finds itself standing in the eye of a storm. The promise of sudden wealth and jobs for all is clouded by the spectre of environmental damage, the unsettled question of Aboriginal land claims, and the influx of hundreds of newcomers which will, inevitably, bring with it a new set of social problems. These issues have already created divisions among the people of the town. Some are eager to benefit from the coming economic boom, while others see the changes as threatening a way of life which has been successful for generations. A storm of social, political and economic forces is about to be unleashed on the residents of Nain. It will change their lives forever.