Lost Children of the Carricks

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

For a tiny country that lived for so long in the tailwind of Great Britain, the people of Ireland know intimately what it means for a nation’s food source to dry up, to be dislocated from land, family and community, to be unwelcome in new countries, to be feared and chastised for wanting to preserve their language, religion and heritage.

We know what ordinary people face when their country is stripped of its natural resources to feed the engine of an insatiable global power. Ireland’s history shares the horrific death or deportation paradigm that continues to mark the lives of countless thousands. The 70 million strong Irish diaspora scattered around the world testifies to this reality.

Today in Honduras, farmers are watching helplessly as crops fail for a fifth straight year. With nothing to sell and no food supplies to feed their families, they’ve entered this growing season without any reserves. This scenario is painfully familiar to the Irish.

The Great Irish Famine of 1847 triggered a global migration of over one million Irish as a result of political expediency and repetitive crop failure. We know intimately what it is like for nature to fail, leaving families without food and safety, and vulnerable to disease and opportunists who take advantage of the plight of the powerless.

I wanted to make a film through the eyes of a single family to help people understand that history ties us all together and—above all—to see the inter-connectedness of events in a broader context. Millions of Irish experienced exactly what we are witnessing on borders in Europe, Asia and the US today. Separation of families, abuse for speaking in our mother tongue, violent attacks from ‘nativists’ who want to keep their country isolated, xenophobic and unblemished.

Even today, I have personally experienced ‘anti-other’ sentiment and have personally been told on more than one occasion NOT to speak Irish to my son. This, despite my long career holding two distinguished university chairs in Irish Studies in North America.

Over the past 175 years, the Irish experienced the overwhelming social isolation that precedes integration. They too were locked in a parallel universe through no fault of their own. They too were desperate to do whatever was necessary to transition into a new life and bring their families out of danger to a safe haven.

A key theme and inspiration for the title ‘Lost Children’ focuses on how migration breaks families apart indefinitely. We follow the journey of the Kaveney’s from Sligo, Ireland who came to North America in 1847—for a fresh start during the darkest year of the famine. Their journey across the Atlantic aboard the Carricks of Whitehaven was fraught with danger and ended in shipwreck. Five of their 6 children, aged 2 to 10, drowned in the Gulf of St. Lawrence—within sight of the shore. Their bodies were never recovered.

Imagine the wrenching despair felt by the one surviving child, Martin (12) at the loss of his sisters and watching the anguish of his parents. Imagine having to help bury the 87 bodies that washed ashore into a mass grave. Imagine not being able to communicate with the kind people who were trying to help you because you didn’t speak their language (in this case, French). Imagine arriving with minimal possessions, or even basic clothing.

Imagine watching other surviving kids from the boat being whisked away from you, scooped up for informal fostering and disappearing into the unknown. Imagine watching the few other surviving families leave you behind, as they continued their way toward ‘legal processing’ at the quarantine station up river on Grosse-Île.

When news of the wreck of the Carricks reached Ireland, loved ones left behind assumed there were no survivors and that part of their family tree was severed forever. This heartbreak passed from generation to generation for 168 years until finally, a Québec family returned to Ireland looking for their roots and for healing.

It is impossible for me to disregard the similarities to the horrors being reported on the southern border of the US today.

Ireland’s greatest export has always been our people. Everyone loves ‘all things Irish’ as is manifested every St Patrick’s Day. Everyone wants to be Irish in the moment but they barely understand their true history. After spending 30 years teaching in high schools and universities in Europe and North America and presenting over 1000 concerts and music workshops throughout the world, I witness each generation either softening their origin story, rationalizing, or radicalizing it—perhaps, looking for someone to blame.

In making Lost Children, I wanted to focus on the tremendous strength and resilience Irish families had, imagining a future for themselves and their country. It was also important for me to balance the true historic devastation of the famine with the incredible hope and joy of the survivors, and what they accomplished as immigrants in their new country.

To keep our story rooted in its defining cultural elements, our soundtrack showcases well-known traditional musicians from Canada and Ireland. In Irish, we say music and story are one. The film concludes with a family reunion in Ireland and powerful exchanges of music, song and dance. Throughout the film, music embodies the narrative like an unbroken spiritual voice linking the past and the present.

We were constricted by a tight budget and challenged by filming in isolated locations in Ireland, Canada, and the US. Fortunately, several leading Irish and Canadian historians and musicians lent their talents to this extraordinary story. As well as being an anthropologist and cultural historian, I’m fluent in Irish, French and English. As a result, I was able to access multilingual source materials, ship manifests, news archives, parish records, etc. We also obtained rare archival footage showing life in rural Québec during the 1920s that has never been used in modern film.

Unlike most shipwrecks, there is no official list of survivors from the Carricks final journey in 1847. There is a movement unfolding on Facebook and in genealogy forums to ‘crowd source’ a list, and I hope the film will contribute to that effort in reuniting families and healing broken family trees on both sides of the Atlantic.

Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin
Writer & Director: Lost Children of the Carricks
Montréal (July 2020)