Results tagged “deathorcanada”

The recently aired docu-drama Death or Canada tells the tragic story of one family fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland by immigrating to Canada in the summer of 1847. En route, John and Mary Willis lost four of their five children to typhus before arriving in Toronto in mid-June. Shortly afterward, as the family moved inland, John and the last son died of the disease, and Mary Willis disappeared from the historical record. They were but one family in a flood of thirty-eight thousand Irish refugees who overwhelmed Toronto, at the time a town of only twenty thousand. But their story puts a human face on a period that, despite having become a common point of identity for Irish-Canadians, is rarely discussed in any detail in Canada or Ireland. And the film, which aired last month to critical acclaim and strong viewership, marks an effective convergence between the thorough research of academic history and the personal narrative details that help make history appealing to a broad public audience.