On Strike : The Winnipeg General Strike, 1919

For 200 years, coal mining had been a way of life--and death--in Cape Breton. By 1920 things were looking up: miners were unionized and paid decent wages. Then the British Empire Steel Corporation arrived and bought every single steel and coal company in Nova Scotia. BESCO also owned stores, houses and land. Then the company cut wages by a third--setting off a bitter labour dispute. The miners tightened their belts and settled in for a long strike. Company stores were looted and burned, and finally in 1925 the military ended the unrest with brute force. But the miners, in an important sense, had won. They broke up the monopoly and provided an example to workers across the country.

Every spring for over 100 years, Newfoundland men had gone sealing, aware of the dangers from ice floes and storms. The S.S. Newfoundland, continuing in this tradition, set sail in March 1914. The ship became stuck in ice 20 miles from shore, so the men crossed the ice to the Stephano, a vessel working a seal patch a few miles away. Later that day, the Stephano's captain ordered all 132 men back to their own ship and continued his journey. Each captain thought the men were safely on board the other's ship. But the sealers were stranded on the ice, and that evening a storm struck, with howling winds and freezing snow. When rescue arrived three days later, 78 men were dead and nine missing.

A story of village life in Ontario in the 1850s as seen through the eyes of three young children. The whole community participates in the building of the new schoolhouse and its opening day celebrations.