National Network for Equitable Library Service

Lac-Mégantic, le 6 juillet 2013. En cette chaude nuit d’été, un train fou sans conducteur tirant des bombes de pétrole explosif dévale la pente qui mène au cœur de la localité et en pulvérise le centre-ville, carbonisant 47 victimes prises au piège et laissant dans son sillage une insouciance à jamais perdue. Qui sont les vrais coupables de cette tragédie? Qui a pris le contrôle de la scène de crime? Qui assure la reconstruction et pour le bien de qui?

The remarkable story of Lanier Phillips and the shipwreck that changed his life. On February 18, 1942 the US Navy destroyer Truxton was shipwrecked off Newfoundland. 110 men died; of the 46 who survived one was black. The rescuers, never having seen a black man before, tried to scrub his skin clean and white. This is a story about growing up with fear in Klan-dominated Georgia, enlisting in a segregated navy, facing death in the icy North Atlantic, and a rescue which galvanised a man to fight racial discrimination.

This "radio archaeology project" excavates the chronicle of Saint Brendan in the 21st century with the help of Marcel Proust and modern sound recording equipment.

When the North Atlantic cod fishery collapsed in the 1990's, it catapulted over 30,000 fishers out of work - the largest layoff in Canadian history. This is the story of two brothers in a remote community who had built their own fishing boat, cutting local trees and constructing the vessel entirely by hand. They christened it The Lifetime Struggle. Their fishing enterprise was in the black, but years later they accepted a government loan to install a larger engine - unfortunately the very year before the fish stock collapsed and the government shut the fishery.

An investigation of Guglielmo Marconi and the first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission. Created for the centenary of Marconi's transmission. On December 12th, 1901 Guigliermo Marconi received the world's first trans-Atlantic wireless signal on the cliff just above our studio. Or did he?

This 52-minute “documentary novel” about British women who married foreign soldiers during World War II is based upon real wartime diaries, letters, photos and recordings. More than a reconstruction of history, it is also a personal journey of discovery, as events of the 1990's resonate with those of the 1940's.

On July 2, 1992 the once-gigantic Newfoundland cod fishery was shut down. Twelve years later, 70,000 people had left, and coastal communities were struggling to survive. The blow to the culture was as dramatic as the economic effect, but how do you measure cultural change? Perhaps with a centuries-old “set dance”.

In 1930's Newfoundland, times are desperate. People salvage cast-off food from St. John's harbour, the dole is 6 cents a day, and families are ripped apart in the struggle for survival. A popular movement of the unemployed rises from the mire of despair to take on the British-run Commission Government, fighting for jobs, dignity and respect. Their leader is Pierce Power. For decades, this story was hidden in the Newfoundland Constabulary archives, until uncovered by program-maker Katherine Welbourn.

The multiple award-winning feature documenting the aftermath of the 20th century's greatest marine ecological disaster: the near-elimination of the largest fish biomass on the planet - the great Northern Cod stocks, and the subsequent collapse of a 500-year-old fishery.

Leon Perlee restores antique street organs in Holland's oldest surviving street organ business. On the other side of the Atlantic, Cubans too play these unusual instruments. On a visit to Cuba, Leon meets Milades Sosa, the niece of a craftsman in the organ factory. For both of them, it was love at first sight. But strict immigration laws and visa restrictions keep Leon and Milades physically apart. Corresponding through words and music they hope they will eventually be reunited forever. But will they?