The Full Film

Lost Children of The Carricks | Defying the Great Irish Famine to Create a Canadian Legacy

A 55 minute documentary of exodus and reunion spanning 168 years

Written and directed by Dr Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin | Principal of the School of Irish Studies, Concordia University (Montréal, Québec, Canada)

Narrated by Irish poet and playwright Vincent Woods (RTE, Dublin, Ireland)

Produced by Celtic Crossings Productions (Montréal, Québec)
Executive Producer Cecilia McDonnell

Lost Children of the Carricks is the first trilingual documentary film to deal with the Great Irish Famine (English | Irish | French)

Great Famine research has focused mainly on the lifeworlds of Irish immigrants in English-speaking urban North America.

This story focuses on an Irish-speaking community that transitioned directly to a French-speaking world.

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LOST CHILDREN bears witness to:

  • The mass clearances of Irish-speaking families from the Irish estates of British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston at the height of the Great Famine
  • A system of assisted emigration from County Sligo that banished Irish families to die aboard the ill-fated ship Carricks of Whitehaven and

A 3,000 Mile Voyage to the Far Side of the Atlantic

Lord Palmerston’s tenants departed a Gaelic world in rural Sligo for a Francophone world in rural Québec, carrying their music and folklore, language and religion to an emerging Canadian nation.

One of nine coffin ships hired by Palmerston to transport 2000 of his surplus tenants to Canada, The Carricks would wreck off the frozen Gaspé coast on the Gulf of St. Lawrence in May 1847. Only 48 of the 173 passengers would reach the shore alive.

The film opens with a haunting sean nós lament and re-enacts an old tradition of leave-taking in the West of Ireland.

Before departing home and clachán, emigrants brought their fire to the fire of a neighbour hoping that one day they would return home to reclaim it and, with it their place in the Old World.

For Patrick Kaveney and Sarah MacDonald’s family from Lord Palmerston’s estate in south Sligo, those embers would flicker in waiting for 168 years.

The Journey

Filmed on location in the Gaspé and in Ireland, Lost Children of the Carricks traces the extraordinary journey of Patrick Kaveney, Sarah MacDonald and their six children from their clachán in Cross, near Ballymote to Québec’s Gaspé peninsula, and the remarkable return of their francophone descendants to Ireland five generations and 168 years later.

The film follows Québécois-Irish historian Georges Kavanagh as he walks in the footsteps of his ‘grandfather’s grandfather’— through the landmarks and seamarks of The Carricks tragedy and  finally down the narrow country road to his ancestral village to meet a community of cousins who had assumed that their relatives had all perished in the wreck of The Carricks.

The Experts

This trilingual film is enriched by expert testimony from leading Irish historian Professor Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh (National University of Ireland Galway) and Sligo historian Joe McGowan (Sligo Heritage), and rare archival footage of cultural life in rural Québec during the 1930s.

The Soundtrack

Emotional soundtracks are performed by Canadian grand master Pierre Schryer, Inis Oírr flute player Mícheál Ó hAlmhain, Clare fiddler and composer Joan Hanrahan, Prince Edward Island violinist and composer Kate Bevan-Baker, award-winning Connemara singer Áine Meenaghan, and Clare concertina player and uilleann piper Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin.

IMPORTANT THEMES

Importance of Trilingual Historical Research

Importance of Family Memory Across Generations

  • The story of the Lost Children of the Carricks and the Kavanagh family was passed from generation to generation and, finally, entrusted to 80 year-old Quebecois-Irish oral historian, Georges Kavanagh.
  • Kavanagh’s ancestors, Patrick Kaveney and Sarah MacDonald would eventually lose their Gaelic family name.
  • Over time, their surname Kaveney (Ó Caomhánaigh) evolved to Kavanagh in rural Québec. This alias would hinder the search for an ancestral home in Ireland five generations later.

Similarities between the Irish Global Diaspora and Human Displacement throughout History

As with displaced and exiled people in the 21st century, the Irish exodus resulted in:

  • cultural cleansing
  • linguistic isolation
  • oppression of religion
  • inability to return home
  • prejudice and xenophobia
  • loss of identity through name change
  • stark landscape and environmental changes
  • break-up of families separated in quarantine stations and orphanages worldwide

The Twist
After being evicted off of Lord Palmerston’s land in Sligo in 1847, descendants of Patrick and Sarah Kaveney would again lose lands to state expropriation in 1969 – this time in Gaspé, in the New World. Read more here

BACKGROUND

The Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852 was the worst humanitarian disaster in Western Europe during the 19th century. Its global consequences are as tragic as the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian genocide a century later.

Over one million Irish died and another million were exiled. The population of the Republic of Ireland would never recover. With a current population of 4.8 million, the Republic of Ireland is the only nation state in the world with fewer people than it had in the mid-nineteenth century.

During the famine years of 1845-1852, Canada received approximately 300,000 Irish refugees. In the summer of 1847, over 20,000 would die at sea, in quarantine stations, fever sheds, orphanages and shantytowns across Canada.

While Grosse Île on the St. Lawrence is the largest famine graveyard outside of Ireland and well known,  there are sites associated with the tragic été irlandaise (Irish summer) of 1847 scattered throughout Quebec.

Cap-des-Rosiers on the isolated edge of the Gaspé peninsula may be the least known. On May 18, 1847, the brig Carricks of Whitehaven carrying tenants from Lord Palmerston’s estates in the northwest of Ireland sunk after striking a reef near Cap-des-Rosiers.

Of the 173 passengers on board, only 48 reached the shore alive.

DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY

Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin
Photo Credit: Sandrine Brodeur-Desrosiers

Writer / Director Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin is a leading Irish ethnomusicologist, author, cultural historian and award-winning traditional musician.

An endowed professor, Ó hAllmhuráin holds the bilingual Johnson Chair in Québec and Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia University, Montreal and directs the research of several graduate and post-doctoral scholars. He previously held the  Jefferson Smurfit Chair of Irish Studies and was Professor of Music at University of Missouri-St. Louis (2000-09).

A prolific writer, Ó hAllmhuráin is the author of Flowing Tides: History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape (Oxford University Press, 2016) and the best-selling Short History of Irish Traditional Music (Dublin, O’Brien Press, 2017).

In addition to hundreds of publications, performances and recordings on Irish music and folklife, Ó hAllmhuráin has lectured in Irish, English and French at European and North American universities, at The Library of Congress (Washington DC) and is a North American correspondent for Ireland’s RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta.

Funded by the Québec government, Professor ÓhAllmhuráin’s current research investigates Irish cultural memory, lifeworlds and soundscapes in Québec and Canada since the fall of New France.

→ Watch the film free now

The Story Behind The Film

In March 1847, at the height of Irish famine, Patrick Kaveney and Sarah McDonnald embarked with their six young children on a two-mast brig, Carricks of Whitehaven, across the wild Atlantic destined for Canada and a new life.

Together with the other Irish-speaking passengers of the heavily loaded ship, they were being transported off the Irish estates of Lord Palmerston, one of the most powerful British politicians in history.

Serving twice as British Prime Minister and in office almost continuously from 1807 until 1865, Palmerston’s immense estates in Ireland included 20,000 acres and over 14,000 tenants.

On the night of May 18, 1847, the Brig Carricks encountered a severe storm in the Gulf of St Lawrence which wrecked the ship and scattered debris and survivors along the coast just 4 miles east of Cape Rosier.

Of the 183 people who were transported off Palmerston’s Sligo estates on the Carricks, only 48 would survive the journey.

Lost Children of the Carricks places the Canadian experience of the Irish speaking Kaveneys into historical context, their integration and adaptation to the frozen wilderness of rural Québec and how they kept their Gaelic language and culture alive in a foreign land.

Finally, the film follows Georges Kavanagh, their French speaking descendant who has dedicated his life to preserving the family’s oral history.

In 2015, Georges triumphantly reversed the journey returning 6 Kavanaghs to Ireland from the Gaspé to reunite with long lost relatives.

168 years and 7 generations later

As reported in Downpatrick Recorder – Saturday 03 July 1847

CANADA—EMIGRATION

By the Hibernia, we have received files of Canadian papers to the latest dates. They give appalling accounts of the suffering of the Irish emigrants from fever and dysentery.

Wreck Emigrant Vessel.—Dreadful Loss of Life.— The Gazette of June 11, says— ln letter dated Cape Hosier, May 19th, which appeared in our paper of Monday last, announcing the melancholy fate of the brig Carrick,’ R. Thompson, master, from Sligo, which was lost near that place with all her passengers except 48, and one boy belonging to her crew, the number of passengers was stated to 167; that 119 of them would appear to have perished, and. and with the boy, in all 120 persons.

In looking over a file of Irish papers received by last mail, we have met with an extract from a Sligo paper. According to which the number drowned, including the boy, would 129, instead of 120, unless the ill-fated ship had already lost her passengers before the awful catastrophe by which so many of the poor people sent out free by Lord Palmerston wore consigned to a watery grave.

The Miracle, which left Liverpool towards the end of March, with 400 emigrants, was, on the night of the 9th of May, wrecked off the Magdalen Islands, and 70 of the emigrants were drowned. The survivors were conveyed to Picton. Twenty of the unfortunate emigrants had previously perished from fever.

Carricks of Whitehaven’s Final Passengers

Who were the passengers of the Carricks of Whitehaven who traveled to Canada only to wreck off the coast of Cap des Rosiers on the edge of Québec? Sadly, there is no definitive list of survivors (other than the crew!).

We give tribute to the families from Palmerston North and South Sligo estates who are bound by that fateful journey.

Although the Kaveneys remained in the Gaspé region, most survivors continued to the Grosse Isle Quarantine Station, further down the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the following years, Carricks survivors would continue their journey settling in Canada and throughout New England and New York. 

Now a World-Heritage site, Grosse Isle is the largest burial ground for refugees of the Great Famine outside Ireland.

Lord Palmerston’s Other Ships

The port of Sligo on the Garavogue River was one of the busiest in the West of Ireland during the famine years.

Between April and October 1847, 65 ships carrying 13,000 famine emigrants sailed out of Sligo—among them, nine ships hired by Palmerston to transport 2000 of his surplus tenants to North America.

His lordship would sponsor 10% of all assisted passages from Ireland during the famine years.