Film Screening: The Lost Children of the Carricks

A 70 minute documentary of exodus and reunion spanning 168 years

Written and directed by Professor Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin | Johnson Chair in Québec and Canadian Irish Studies, Concordia University (Montréal, Québec, Canada)

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

Produced by Celtic Crossings Productions (Montréal, Québec)

Executive Producer Cecilia McDonnell

Trílangue – Montréal-based masters ensemble presenting traditional Québécois, Irish and Scottish music, song and dance will precede the film screening.

Music to follow from CCÉ Paddy Killoran.

The film investigates:

- The mass clearances of Irish-speaking families from the Irish estates of British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston at the height of the Great Famine

- The families’ assisted emigration from Sligo aboard the ill-fated ship Carricks of Whitehaven and

- Their lasting legacy on Canadian shores.

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.