Pit Pony is a 1999 CBC television series which tells the story of small-town life in Glace Bay, on the island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1904.
Willie MacLean is a 12-year-old boy with a love for horses and liking to school to escape the difficult times his family has.
When the series starts, Willie's father has been dead for over a year from coal consumption, and his older brother, John also died in a mine cave in.
When Willie's brother was killed in a cave in and his father wounded two or three years earlier (in the Pit Pony television film), Willie was forced to fill his brother's shoes to support his older sister Nellie, and two younger sisters, Maggie and Sarah, until their father recovered.
Willie found work at the mine lonely and unfriendly; as a result he forms a bond with a pit pony horse in order to make it through each day.