"They Didn't Starve Us Out": Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s

"They Didn't Starve Us Out": Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s

| 21 min

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For 200 years, coal mining had been a way of life 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 cut wages by a third, setting off a bitter labour dispute. The miners settled in for a long strike. Finally, in 1925, the military ended the unrest with brute force. But the miners, in one sense, had won. They broke up the monopoly and provided an example to workers across the country.

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"They Didn't Starve Us Out": Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s, Patricia Kipping, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

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Credits
  • director
    Patricia Kipping
  • producer
    Floyd Elliott
    Keith Packwood
  • script
    Patricia Kipping
  • sound editing
    Patricia Kipping
  • narrator
    Lulu Keating
  • music
    Ronald MacEachern
  • re-recording
    Roger Lamoureux
  • executive producer
    Douglas MacDonald
    Floyd Elliott
  • animation camera
    Raymond Dumas
    Pierre Landry
    Lynda Pelley
  • None

    are these the same b'ys whom worked along side their neighbours that were employed at the steel mill in Sydney, NS? Look what the awful company left!

    None, 14 Apr 2020

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