Season 1 • Episode 44
LatestWhen Willie gets an opportunity of a lifetime to leave behind his life as a pit boy and attend photography school in Boston, he has to make a decision between following his dreams or his father's footsteps.
In 1904, on the Nova Scotia island of Cape Breton, 12-year-old Willie McLean, following the death of his father, joins the coal mines, where he bonds with the working horses underground. His family's mining legacy shapes their lives.
Acting
Elliot Page's screen debut at age 12, already magnetic.
Production
Authentic Cape Breton locations, no studio fakery.
Writing
Unsentimental scripts that respect working-class intelligence.
Creator
Joyce Barkhouse
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Based on Joyce Barkhouse's novel; she wrote it after discovering most Canadians didn't know child miners existed.
Glace Bay's mines closed in 1984, leaving this series as accidental elegy to a vanished way of life.
CA
