Powerful New Docudrama Reveals
a Forgotten Chapter of the Great Irish Famine
Death or Canada is an Irish Film and Television Award-nominated two-part Canadian-Irish documentary which was broadcast on RTÉ One in November/December 2008.
It follows the Protestant Willis family of 1847, who escape to Canada during the Great Famine. The dramatic storyline is interspersed with real-life commentaries from historians and other experts.
Death or Canada is co-produced by the Irish television production company Tile Films, the company behind the September 2008 documentary Cromwell in Ireland, and Canadian company Ballinran Productions.
Death or Canada will be airing on History TV on March 16 from 8 to 10 PM. It was recently nominated for an Irish Film and Television Academy award for best documentary series. Awards are presented February 14.
This powerful docudrama reveals a forgotten chapter of the great Irish famine and how the fledgling city of Toronto was brought to its knees by the greatest humanitarian crisis of the Nineteenth Century.
The year was 1847. Ireland was in the grip of a devastating famine that would eventually claim as many as a million lives and force a million more to leave their country for good.
Among those fleeing their homeland are John and Mary Willis and their five children. They gamble everything in the hope of starting new lives in the new world.
In the summer of 1847, when American ports increased the cost of entry, more than a hundred thousand desperate Irish refugees choose to head to Canada, then a colony of the British Empire.
They travel in the dank and dark holds of converted cargo ships, nicknamed "coffin ships" because of the conditions on board and the high rate of mortality.
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AN OLD WOMAN weeps over the body of her dead grandson in the new two-part Canadian-Irish documentary Death or Canada. |
Ship's fever or typhus is rampant and 20,000 people die en route. By the time they reach their destination, John and Mary Willis have lost four of their five children to typhus.
In 1847, Toronto, now Canada's largest city, was a frontier town of 20,000 people. Between May and October of that year, 40,000 sick and dying refugees descended upon the city including the ancestors of Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company.
In the heart of what is now the entertainment district, home to the world famous Toronto International Film Festival, archaeologists dig for evidence - searching for signs of the temporary refugee camp where more than 1,000 people died,
More than a century and a half later, the impact of the Irish famine still reverberates. The crisis transformed a city, a nation and a continent - reshaping North American society forever. Today, more than 75 million people claim Irish heritage.
For more details, visit: www.deathorcanada.com.
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