Event

Goodwin's Way

Goodwin's Way
Dir. Neil Vokey (Canada 2016)
Run Time: 1 Hour
Documentary Feature
Friday May 25th 7:15 PM
5 Euro
ARCAM

Almost a century after controversial labor activist Ginger Goodwin was shot, residents of Cumberland, B.C. find themselves at a crossroads when highway signs honoring his memory disappear.

By removing the signs marking Ginger Goodwin Way, supporters claim that the provincial government aimed to erase a powerful legacy of workers' rights. Meanwhile, his critics argue that Goodwin was nothing more than a lawbreaker, a draft-dodger, and a rabble-rouser.

The notorious Cumberland mineworker took part in some of Canadas most important labor battles of the early 1900s. Blackballed after the bitter 1912 Vancouver Island miners strike, Goodwin fought for the eight-hour workday at the height of World War I, while boldly opposing the conscription of his fellow workers. His influence was so great that his death in 1918 prompted Canada's first-ever general strike.

Now, just two kilometers from the road that once bore his name, clouds loom over the site of a newly proposed coalmine. While Cumberlands young families dream of transcending their town's traditional reliance on a boom-and-bust resource economy, the Raven Coal Project threatens to return the region to a era that left boarded-up buildings, slag heaps, and industrial clean-up sites in its wake.

Goodwin's Way examines a town's grassroots resistance to a coal-powered future, as Cumberland residents reconnect with Goodwins legacy of passionate defiance: his "way".

This documentary delves beneath the veneer of progressivism that liberal Canada hides its reactionary past and present behind.
JB