Wind at My Back is a television series that aired in Canada on CBC Television between 1996 and 2001. It was created and produced by Kevin Sullivan, best known for his adaptation of Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea. The series had five seasons, each with thirteen episodes, and a Christmas themed movie produced to wrap up loose ends, following the unexpected cancellation of the series.
The series is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, in the fictional small mining town of New Bedford in Northern Ontario. The family drama followed the members of the Bailey family as they lived through a time marked by hardship. Wind at My Back was loosely based on the Max Braithwaite books Never Sleep Three in a Bed and The Night We Stole the Mountie's Car.
Plot The series opens in 1932, as Jack and Honey Bailey lose their hardware store and are forced to move back to Jack's hometown of New Bedford, Ontario, where his family owns a silver mine. When Jack dies after being stung by hornets, Honey is forced to leave her children, Hubert, Henry and Violet, with her domineering mother-in-law while she searches for work. The series follows Honey, her children, their extended family, and friends as they attempt to survive and thrive during the 1930s.
Episodes Series overview
Season 1 (1996–97) No.overall No. inseason Title Directed by Written by Original air date
Season 2 (1997) No.overall No. inseason Title Directed by Written by Original air date
Season 3 (1999) No.overall No. inseason Title Directed by Written by Original air date
Season 4 (2000) No.overall No. inseason Title Directed by Written by Original air date
Season 5 (2000–01) No.overall No. inseason Title Directed by Written by Original air date
TV Movie
Characters
Honey Bailey When the show begins, Roman Catholic Honey (Cynthia Belliveau in seasons 1–3, and Laura Bruneau, seasons 4 & 5) is married to Presbyterian Jack Bailey. They own a small town hardware store, but it is forced into bankruptcy when the bank calls their loan. They return to Jack's mother's home, revealing Jack is from a privileged upbringing. Jack finds the visit intolerable with his overbearing mother, May, and retreats with his family to their summer cabin by the lake. Upon cleaning the house out, Jack encounters a nest of hornets that quickly overtake him. Honey and the children try to get him back to town, but he succumbs to the stings and dies soon after. While at May's house, Honey desperately tries to find work to no avail. May also forces Honey to give up her baby daughter, Violet, to the care of distant relatives, telling her that the judge would find her unfit should she try to fight it. Honey never fully understood the arrangement May had offered the relatives regarding Violet, that she was up for a full adoption. Not finding work in New Bedford, Honey decides she must leave the boys with May while she looks for work elsewhere. She lives with her brother in North Bridge for a while. She got a job, but her brother sold the building the apartment was in, stole her money, and left town without telling her. She then worked in a garment factory in Toronto, but lost it following a near-death illness. To recuperate, she reluctantly went back to living at May's, and is briefly romantically pursued by a cocky local constable from England. She is given an office job at the silver mine, May's mine, and soon creates a following in the town as a hairdresser. She makes friends in the small town, one of whom lives in the house, Grace, May's adult daughter. Grace is also a savior to the boys on many occasions. Honey and the boys suffered months of May's manipulations, including the near-kidnap of her daughter, Violet, to Florida. Honey takes her children to live in the back room of the local laundry. She loses her job at the mine, but gains a very part-time one at the laundry. She also loses all of her hairdressing clients. Max Sutton, a man of whom she had grown quite fond, asks her to marry him, to which she agrees. He then tentatively accepts a teaching job in Albany, NY. May is beyond distressed that Honey would take her grandsons away. She tries first to manipulate the New Bedford school board into letting Max keep his job, but after they had fired him for her earlier, they refused. She then goes to her son Robert to try to convince him to give Honey her job back at the mine. This also does not work. May's last resort is to try to make a gift of the house Honey had been saving to buy, but May had purchased it out from under her so she could not have it and Honey declined the gift. At the last minute, Max receives a job offer that could keep them in New Bedford, something Honey's second son, Henry, or Fat, really wants to do. His youth and naivete allowed him to often see the good of his grandmother May's heart and he openly explained he did not want to leave because he knew it would hurt her if they did.
Honey and Max Sutton marry. They live in the local hotel in a suite of small but comfortable rooms. Hub's bad behaviour seem to be level out and things quiet for the family. Shortly after their marriage, Honey discovers she is pregnant, giving birth to Zach. Her joy quickly evaporates, though, when she is diagnosed with tuberculosis. She leaves for a sanatorium to recover and Max is forced to raise the four children. When she returns one year later, Honey finds that the children have grown and changed and that everyone in town is scared of her due to her illness. Slowly, she recovers her hair salon and tries to begin her life again. Soon, her life is back to normal.
May Bailey May (Shirley Douglas) is Honey's domineering mother-in-law. She and her late husband are the founders of the town. They ran a mining operation that continued to keep the family going. May's money and prestige allow her to have whatever she wants. She uses her pride, her sense of family, and her religion to justify most of her highly manipulative actions. She is often right, but all of the conclusions could have been reached in far less intrusive ways. She never lets people reach their own conclusions. Due to her deeply held Protestant ways, she is completely intolerant and unaccepting of Honey's Catholicism and any effects on the boys, something about which she is not quiet. Through conversations with Grace, her daughter, she is also revealed to still resent Honey for having taken her late son away from the family mining business. This does seem unknown to Honey.
Very soon after Jack's death, she forces Honey to give up her small daughter, Violet, and keeps her from getting a job in the town, knowing this would force Honey to leave to look for work elsewhere. May views the boys as a second chance, an opportunity to fix the mistakes she made with her own sons. While her decisions are often harsh and manipulative, May honestly believes that her decisions are what is best for the family. May can be a confusing mix of qualities. She is frequently self-serving and manipulative, but she can show moments of true gentleness, kindness, and understanding. These moments are few, but they do allow some insight into who she really is. She also allows snippets of explanation out when she talks to the boys. In one of her responses to a request from the boys, she reveals what has happened in her life to bring her to where she is now. They are flabbergasted their grandmother has survived so much and seem to show a bit of new-found respect, more so with Henry, the younger son. Hub tends to remain defiant and cynical. May is also a Director of the local homeless shelter for local people, at which the other family members often help, but she resists her son-in-law Max Sutton's attempts to open it to out-of-town hobos.
It becomes apparent that she has a serious heart condition and suffers a number of severe heart attacks. She attempted to hide her condition from the family, but it is discovered after the attacks become more severe. May is frustrated by her family's attempts to care for her and insists they are only interested in taking over the mine. She resists the advice of the doctor, her private nurse. and family whenever possible so she can attempt to control the mine. Eventually, she fires the nurse and regains her position as head of the mine. Her relationship remains rocky with Honey until Honey gives birth to Zach, in the mining office. May delivers the baby and decides to put her differences with Honey aside. Later, May suffers a stroke that leaves her partially paralyzed on one side. With the support of her family and a new nurse, she slowly recovers. She still maintains her position as head of the mine. May recovers from her stroke very well, traveling to Europe within about 18 months of the stroke. She and Grace are recovering the body of Grace's deceased husband, who was killed fighting in Spain. This is mentioned in the Christmas special.
Grace Bailey Grace (Kathy Greenwood) is Honey's unmarried adult sister-in-law who lives under the same roof with her domineering mother. Grace is a gentle, loving, happy, and playful soul who can appear naive or at least inexperienced at times, and loves magazines about movie stars. Grace has never left home because her mother destroys her self-confidence at every turn and frequently states Grace "could never make it for five minutes on her own". While Grace mostly obeys her mother, when she strongly believes in something, she will stand up for herself or the issue. But to experience many of the normal things in life and without experiencing the wrath of her disapproving mother, she has found that doing things without May knowing is the path of least resistance. When the boys move into their grandmother's home, Grace teaches them secrets of how to survive in the household. In return, one of the skills she learned from the boys and Honey was how to dismiss May and to simply state how things are to her face without feeling completely crushed by her. Grace was once so delicate, May barely had to say anything at all and she would have an anxiety attack. She gained more confidence, though, in speaking the truth to May. Both Grace and Honey never use harsh language with May, unlike Hub, who really could not care less if May knows the truth of his feelings. These outbursts leave room for Grace to explain to her mother where she has gone wrong and that if she keeps it up she "won't be there to hold her hand."