Summer of Sorrow

2 x 1 hr/1 x 90 minute docudrama
History Television (Canada) RTE (Ireland)

Summer of Sorrow is a docudrama that takes viewers back in time to one of the greatest humanitarian crisis of the 19th Century – the Irish Potato Famine when more than one million people died and an equal number fled their homeland.

In the summer of 1847, 38,000 sick and dying refugees from Ireland landed in Toronto overwhelming the existing population of 20,000 causing a health-care crisis beyond imagination.

Using archaeology and modern science, we dig beneath the streets of Toronto to uncover clues to this crisis that faced the young city of Toronto. It’s a story of missing bodies, unmarked burial grounds, remarkable heroes and appalling opportunists.

Through dramatic recreations, viewers are taken to 1847 Ireland to witness the horrors ravaged on the people and the land and to Canada where Toronto scrambled to cope with this human tsunami of suffering.

Click here to visit the Summer of Sorrow Microsite.