‘We changed the labour laws for the country’: Precedent-setting 1978 ‘Fleck Strike’ focus of opening play at Blyth Festival

It’s first day of rehearsals for Blyth Festival’s show about a strike that changed labour laws across the country. CTV London’s Scott Miller reports.

“Welcome everyone to the 2026 season of the Blyth Festival,” exclaimed Gil Garratt to a room full of actors on Day 1 of rehearsals for the 51^st season of the Blyth Festival.

“This is such an exciting time of year. We have all the artists arriving in town. Every room in the building is buzzing with activity. This is such a momentous moment every year,” said Garratt, Blyth’s artistic director.

The first play to hit the Blyth stage in June is ripped from the Huron County headlines.

Back in 1978, 80 employees, mostly women, went on strike at Fleck Manufacturing in Centralia, and ultimately changed Canadian labour law and how women were treated in the workplace.

“If you’re under 48, you’ve never heard of it. There’s a lot of older people that don’t even remember it. So, it’s really important that the people see what happened, and the way labour and things happened in those days,” said Mary Lou O’Brien, one of the 80 Fleck Manufacturing employees who went on strike for five months in 1978.

O’Brien says atrocious working conditions and incredibly low wages led the Fleck workers to strike.

At its peak, more than 400 OPP officers were brought in to arrest some picketers. O’Brien says intimidation was rampant against the almost entirely female crew of strikers.

“One night at home, I got a phone call and they threatened my life. They said I would die the next morning on the picket line, but I went anyway,” said O’Brien.

Five months after hitting the picket line, the workers’ first collective agreement was ultimately signed. Ontario Labour laws and workplace standards were changed as a result of the Fleck Strike.

“This is really one of the first strikes where the United Auto Workers in this case had to consider what the specific issues were affecting women in the workplace. And so it really opened up a conversation about that for the first time in Canada,” said Kristen Da Silva, the playwright of ‘Sisters of ’78.’ “So, the outcome of this was not just their victory, but a victory for women, and a victory for labour in Canada.”

“This is what Blyth does best. We are taking a local story, a story that has had a huge impact, not just on our local community, but also on the region, on the province and the country, and we are putting it center stage. We’re taking one of these pieces of history that is all too forgotten or all too little known, and putting it right on the main stage for us all to be able to celebrate and see and think about,” said Garratt.

From her home in Clinton, O’Brien said she is so happy to see ‘Sisters of ’78’ turned into a play for people to see and learn about. An important piece of local, and national history.

“We fought for better working conditions and we changed the labour laws for the entire country,” said O’Brien.

‘Sisters of ‘78’ opens at the Blyth Festival Theatre on June 12.