Death or Canada: Fleeing the Famine
- Grade Level: Senior High (10-12)-Adult
- Subjects: History
- Produced By: Ballinran Productions
- Year: 2008
- Country: Canada
- Language: English
- Running Time: 2h
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It's been called the most traumatic event in Toronto's history. In the summer of 1847, nearly 40,000 Irish famine refugees flooded the city, threatening to overwhelm the local population of only 20,000. A typhus epidemic followed and by the fall, more than 1,000 had died. It remains the single largest loss of life in the city's history and the bodies of those who died are buried anonymously under a school playground in Toronto's downtown east end. The two-hour docudrama begins in Ireland and finishes in Canada. It follows the journey of the Willis family, a family of six who left Ireland in the worst year of the famine and came to the new world in search of a better life.