Men of the Deeps

A vignette of coal mines in New Waterford and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, featuring traditional Cape Breton folk songs sung by Men of the Deeps, a miners' choral group.

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.

May 9, 1992. The Westray mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, explodes, instantly killing all 26 men working underground. Mining coal in Pictou County is notoriously dangerous. It claimed the lives of 650 men in the last 100 years, the same number that died fighting in both world wars. But Westray was supposed to be different: a high-tech operation that would finally make coal mining safe. Westray is a brilliant, innovative documentary that re-creates some of the Westray disaster's most harrowing moments. It focuses on the lives of three widows and three miners lucky enough not to be underground that day when the methane and coal dust ignited. But their lives were torn apart by the events. Meet some of the working men, who felt they had no option but to stay on at Westray. And wives, who heard the rumours, saw their men sometimes bloodied from accidents, and stood by them, hoping it would all turn out all right. This film reaches beyond Westray. It's also about working people everywhere--whose lives are often entrusted to companies that violate the most fundamental rules of safety and decency in the name of profit.