This book offers two plays, both of which are concerned with social justice issues. The first retells the efforts of Ginger Goodwin, who led a coal miners’ strike in Trail, BC, an extended event that contributed to Goodwin’s persecution and death. His assassination resulted in Vancouver’s—and then Canada’s—first general strike in 1918, an action that brought about the eight-hour day for workers.

The second reconstructs events that took place in Kitimat when a pipeline to that city was proposed. Activists convinced the city to call a plebiscite on the issue, making Kitimat the first town to actively take on “Big Oil.” A key element emphasized in the play is the Portuguese/Azorean heritage of many of the town’s workers, as they constituted nearly half of the labour force at the smelter in the 1950s.

Production notes include words to songs that enhance the atmosphere and authenticity of both plays.

Cautions / Content Warnings: A sex scene results in an unwanted pregnancy, resolved when the male gives the young woman money for an abortion.
Other End Matter: Further reading suggestions
Images: B&W photographs
Bibliography: Yes
Index: No

Evaluator: Heidi G., K-12 Educator, BC Books for Schools

Elaine Ávila’s plays are produced in Central America, Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Her Best New Play Awards include: Jane Austen, Action Figure (Festival de los Cocos, Panamá City), Lieutenant Nun (Victoria Critics Circle), and Café a Brasileira (Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon). Her most recent play, Fado, won the award for Favourite Musical in Victoria, BC.Ávila has served as the playwright-in-residence at Pomona College in Los Angeles, Quest University Canada, and Western Washington University; as the Endowed Chair and Head of the M.F.A. Program in Dramatic Writing at the University of New Mexico; and founder of the LEAP Playwriting Program at the Arts Club Theater in Vancouver.She has taught in universities from Portugal to Tasmania, China to Panamá, and is the co-founder of the International Climate Change Theatre Action, involving fifty playwrights, two hundred venues, and twelve thousand audience members worldwide.As the 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the University of the Azores, Ávila lives in New Westminster, British Columbia, with her musician-teacher husband and her sixteen-year-old, a core leader of Sustainabiliteens.

Elaine Ávila's profile page

"Ávila mixes dialogue and song to convey ... emotion as she moulds history to culture to politics, giving readers a welcome new perspective on BC community life..." —British Columbia Review

On The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin: “It’s been nearly a century since Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin was shot and killed in the Cumberland bush on Canada’s Vancouver Island, but thanks to people such as playwright Elaine Ávila, the legacy of the workers’ rights activist won’t soon be forgotten.”
—Cascadia Weekly

On Kitimat: “It’s a story as familiar to people in the US as in Canada – a large corporation comes to a town where they want to develop or deliver resources and they promise work and money, a boom, if the citizens will let the corporation have its way.”
—National Observer