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The Toronto Symphony Orchestra strike happened in 1999. It lasted for 11 weeks. This strike was developed due to prior pay cuts and minimal wages.

In 1991 the orchestra started developing financial problems. By 1992 pay cuts were made for both musicians and the management; otherwise, the orchestra would have had to file for bankruptcy. Musicians reluctantly accepted, hearing promises that the pay cuts would eventually be paid back in 1995 during the next labour discussions.

The 1990s in Africa was a period of broad political movement towards the greater involvement of women in positions of power—this campaign is a part of that change.

In North America and Western Europe in the later half of the 19th century, women began to campaign in earnest for the right to vote. At this time women were second-class citizens. The 1870s were the start of the movement in Canada, but there were few Canadians that supported the women’s right to vote. Two of the groups that lead the way in Manitoba were the Icelandic feminists and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The Icelandic women had settled near Gimli. These women established the first suffragette associations.

The Mayday protest was a series of large-scale demonstrations against the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War.  It happened in 1971 in Washington, DC from May 1 to May 3 and diminished within several days. The goal was to shut down the federal government offices, because the Mayday Tribe (a largely young and more militant segment of the U.S. anti-war movement) had given an ultimatum to the Nixon Administration that this would happen if it did not end the war.

President Tiburcio Carías—founder of the National Party of Honduras—governed Honduras throughout the 1930s and 1940s (known as “decades of Dictators” in Central America as El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala were also under lasting rule of their respective, oppressive dictators). His presidency started on February 1, 1933, and lasted until January 1949. On November 16, 1943, Carías and the National Party rigged and swept the municipal elections. This victory gave him the opportunity to modify the Honduran Constitution to allow him to stay in office for an extended period of time.

During the 1970s, when Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship, the proposal of building several hydroelectric dams on the Xingu River was first presented. These dams were suggested as a way to increase energy supply to Brazil. The location of these proposed dams, along the Xingu River, was within the Brazilian Amazon in the region of Para, Brazil. The proposal was eventually put on hold, due to controversy regarding the dams’ potential location on idigenous land.

In 1989 The Fund for Animals, an organization of activists committed to protecting animals, focused their attention on the Hegins Shoot held annually in Hegins, Pennsylvania. The Hegins Shoot, also known as The Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot, was a Labour Day tradition that dated back to the 1930s. During the event, participants tried to shoot as many pigeons as possible; who ever could shoot the most won the event. Instead of naturally hunting for pigeons, the birds were held in cages and released in front of a firing squad. The event killed roughly 5,000 pigeons per year.

During the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with the entire world watching, the Pivot Legal Society and the City Wide Housing Coalition held a nonviolent campaign. This campaign was an attempt to put pressure on the federal government to establish a National Social Housing Policy, to raise awareness of the magnitude of homelessness in Vancouver and to expose the government's failure to keep their promise of an Olympic housing legacy.

Canadian inner-city neighbourhoods are often a passing thought to political figures and city residents, especially when their demolition means new development and million dollar deals. One such case was that of the decision to build an overpass in Winnipeg’s inner-city. Winnipeg’s Executive Policy Committee (EPC), along with Mayor Robert Steen, made the decision to build the overpass in the summer of 1978 without any community consultation and took the proposal straight to a City Council meeting (in which it was approved within five days). 

In March of 2004, six of the largest catalogers in North America were put on notice for their consumption of endangered forests. Since then, ForestEthics, a nonprofit environmental group committed to protecting North America's forests, has been in detailed discussion with all of these companies and others who are competing to address these environmental issues.

On February 23, 1991, a military group by the name of the NPKC, or National Peace Keeping Council, which was composed of Military academy graduates, sought to overthrow the current government in Thailand, which they believed to be a “parliamentary dictatorship”. NPKC quickly gained control over the government and formed the political party known as Samakki Tham.

In 1931, many people across Canada were struggling to survive through the Depression. In Bienfait, Saskatchewan, Canada, coal miners were facing the same struggles. The price of coal was lower than it had been in recent years, and mine workers were facing unsafe working conditions and steep wage cuts. Miners were often forced to work 10 hours a day in cramped mine shafts that made it difficult to maneuver around. Water would regularly build up in low lying areas in the mines, forcing miners to wade through water to complete their job.

The Panties for Peace campaign began in 2007 in the country of Burma. It quickly found legs as a strategic campaign launched by Burmese women aimed against the extreme brutalities performed by Burma’s military regime. These included systematic and extensive sexual, physical and emotional violence against Burma’s women. The campaign strategically played on the weaknesses of their opponents by exploiting the belief held by many in the military Junta that female undergarments would drain power from the military regime by cursing their soldiers.

Attawapiskat First Nation is a small community located on James Bay approximately 220 kilometers north of Moosonee, Ontario.  Attawapiskat was home to a courageous and passionate young woman named Shannen Koostachin.  Shannen led a campaign of school children to fight for the right to “safe and comfy” schools and quality, culturally based education for First Nations children all across Canada.

In 1936, Anastasio Somoza was elected president of Nicaragua. He ran under the the Liberal Nationalist Party, or PLN. He was elected with broad support among liberals in Nicaragua, although, soon after his election, small numbers of Nicaraguans started to gather in opposition to his presidency. In 1937, a small group of university graduates formed a dicussion group that was highly critical of Somoza; the members of this unnamed group would go on to found the Independent Liberal Party, or PLI - the organization that led the campaign against Somoza in 1944.

In July 1947, Costa Ricans related to the opposition political coalition launched a strike to protest the perceived partiality of the government in upcoming Presidential elections, and to call for the reversal of electoral and tax reform laws that had been enacted in 1946. Specifically, the strikers wanted assurances that measures would be taken to prevent electoral fraud.

The Irrawaddy river, the largest in Burma, begins at the confluence of the Mali Hka and N’Mai Hka rivers in the northern state of Kachin.

Seal hunting, or the slaughter of seals (depending on with whom you are speaking) has become a very controversial topic over recent years. In the past, seals were just another resource used by those living in Northern and more remote communities. The meat was used for human consumption and the oil for lamps and cooking. These particular products, as well as the pelts themselves were exported to other countries for further use. The hunt of these animals was also beneficial to ensure the number of cod fish remained high.

The Doukhobors are a group of Russian peasants who left the Orthodox Church following a schism and were named “douko-borets," meaning “spirit wrestlers.” Their Christian beliefs led them to adopt principles of pacifism, communal living and the sharing of the possessions, the rejection of church and state authorities, and vegetarianism.

In 2001, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Howard Berman of California introduced a piece of proposed legislation named The DREAM, (acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act. Under the proposed Dream Act undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally under parental supervision, would have an opportunity to obtain conditional U.S. citizenship with the possibility of achieving full citizenship upon completion of the process and by finally completing either two years of college or two years in the military.

The context for this campaign starts in the early 1980s with the repatriation of the legislation that founded Canada: the British North America Act of 1867. The idea of repatriation had been around since the 1920s and was finally brought to realization in 1982 by the then Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

On December 9, 2010, twenty-two employees represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada Local 832 walked off the job and began to strike against their employer Malteurop.  Malteurop is the exclusive producer of malt for the Moosehead Brewery along with micro-breweries such as Half-Pints in Winnipeg. Workers went on strike for the purpose of demonstrating to the company that they were serious about their demands for obtaining a fair contract and wanted the company to remove the unnecessary concessions they were demanding of the employees.

At the dawn of the financial crisis, Iceland was controlled by the Independent Party, a right-wing party with decidedly neo-liberal economic policies. Over the past 19 years, banks had been privatized, regulations cut, and the corporate tax rate lowered to 18%. Personal income tax, on the other hand, was held at 36%, regardless of income. As global concern over bank failures grew, the Icelandic government continued to assure citizens that all was well. However, in September 2008, the Icelandic bank Glitner failed, followed closely by the remaining Icelandic banks, Landsbanki and Kaupthing.

In the 1980's, after the Khmer Rouge lost control of much of Cambodia, displaced people flowed back into the capital city of Phnom Penh. Returnees created new settlements and villages when vacant housing was no longer available. One group of returnees consisted of traditional musicians looking for a central location to resume teaching their art. This group of musicians moved into the Bassac Theatre close to the Bassac and Mekong Rivers. Gradually more returnees gathered around this community and in 2005 the Dey Krahorm village consisted of an estimated 800 families.

In Canada, there are many First Nations groups with unique languages and cultures.  One of those is the Cree nation, who speak Cree and are accustomed to Cree social norms within Canada. Manitoba, a central Canadian province, has a large indigenous popular with high unemployment.