The Mills of Power

The Mills of Power is a Canadian television miniseries, directed by Claude Fournier. A historical drama, the film centres on the historical phenomenon of French Canadians who emigrated to New England for work opportunities, tracing their gradual loss of socioeconomic status, political power and cultural identity through the story of a community of French Canadian Americans in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The story is centred mainly on three families: the working class Lamberts, who worked in the dying textile mills and clung strongly to their Québécois heritage; the more middle-class Fontaines, who integrated more successfully into mainstream American life; and the wealthy Roussels, an industrialist family from France who owned the mills and exploited the Québécois immigrants.