Forgotten is about the yearning to know one’s history — what began with a fire at 295 George Street in Toronto becomes the catalyst to share the story of over 100,000 children who came to Canada as indentured farm labour and domestics.
This is the forgotten heritage of many Canadians, both of the children themselves and their descendants.
Eleanor McGrath’s third documentary, “Forgotten” about the British Home Children and their descendants has been receiving great attention on the film festival circuit. In Canada, one in ten people are descended from the children who came to Canada through the child migration scheme, which operated, from 1860s to 1939
Eleanor and Executive Producer Wendy Pitblado, are very excited about the screening documentary film FORGOTTEN on Wednesday 12 April at the HotDocs Cinema on Bloor Street, Toronto. Ontario. The panel discussion following the film is going to be extraordinary moderated by the President of Hot Docs, Chris McDonald.
The doors open at 5.30pm and the screening is at 6.30pm with our panel discussion to follow.
Between 1869 and 1939, over 100,000 ‘British Home Children’ were sent to Canada from the UK and Ireland as part of a child migration scheme and put to work as indentured farm labourers and domestics. When a fire at 295 George St., Toronto, in 2011 took what used to be a ‘Distribution Home’ that assigned the children to new families and jobs, filmmaker M. Eleanor McGrath set off on a journey to uncover the real story that had largely gone unrecognized. Today, descendants of ‘British Home Children’ make up 12% of the country’s population. Forgotten is an essential act of excavation that exposes this suppressed chapter in Canada’s history through intimate interviews with participants and ancestors, bridging the gap between the past, and the present, while restoring our cultural memory with great poignancy.
The only surviving Fegan British Home Child in Canada Pat Maloney (arrival in Canada: 1937), British Home Child descendent Allan Thompson and filmmaker M. Eleanor McGrath will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion with Hot Docs president Chris McDonald.
