This film begins at the end of the Roaring '20s in the newsrooms of The Toronto Daily Star, a big city newspaper whose popularity comes from its appeal to "the little guy".

In the third film of this series, facism looms. As the year 1939 approaches, the newspaper owner Mr. Atkinson, a pacifist, comes to accept the inevitability of another war in Europe.

1. Taking the West (1873 to 1896): The 1870s and 1880s are a time of trial for the young Dominion of Canada. The country's first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, faces economic depression in the factories of the east and a new revolt in the west, led by his old nemesis, Louis Riel. The suppression of the Northwest Rebellion and Macdonald's single-minded insistence that the French-speaking Catholic Riel must hang for treason threatens to tear apart...