Death or Canada is an IFTA-nominated two-part Canadian-Irish docudrama which was broadcast in Ireland on RTÉ One in November/December 2008, in the UK on The History Channel UK (as Fleeing The Famine) in January and February of 2009 and in Canada on History Television on March 16, 2009. The film has also had a limited theatrical release in Canada[1] and enjoyed a gala screening on March 3, 2009 to kick-off the celebrations for Toronto’s 175 birthday, among others the film was introduced by Toronto’s mayor David Miller.[2]

Death or Canada, narrated by Brian Dennehy, follows the Protestant Willis family from Limerick as they flee to Canada in the Spring of 1847 at the height of Great Famine. This dramatic story is interspersed with commentary from historians and other experts. Death or Canada is a Canada-Ireland Treaty Co-Production, produced by Canada’s Ballinran Productions, whose other credits include the series Manic Organic, and Cottage Country and by Ireland’s Tile Films’, the company behind the documentaries Cromwell in Ireland and The Ghosts of Duffy’s Cut. It is directed by IFTA Award-winning director Ruán Magan (In Search of the Pope’s Children).

The title of the film comes from the research of one of the main contributor’s, Mark McGowan, Principal of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. He says that “The title, Death or Canada, was something that I discovered in archives in Limerick, Ireland, in a newspaper where the locals were writing about the choices that had to be made in 1847. They said: ‘During the Cromwellian period, it was to hell or Connaught, and now that’s being writ large in our own time as death or Canada.’ “[3]