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Mar 16. John Little In Conversation: Reimagining The Donnellys
March 16 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
A webinar hosted by Words Director Josh Lambier Sunday, 16 March 2025. A visit with award-winning author and filmmaker John Little to talk about The Donnellys, his two-volume tour-de-force history of Southwestern Ontario’s most famous true crime story.
A note afterwards from James Stewart Reaney, President: London and Middlesex Historical Society. londonhistory.org
Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, the London and Middlesex Historical Society is a co-presenter of this virtual event with Words artistic director Josh Lambier in conversation with John Little, author of The Donnellys, an acclaimed two-volume account of the Biddulph tragedy. We will take a deep dive into Souwesto’s greatest folktale for St. Patrick’s Day. Our host will be Words Festival Director Josh Lambier in partnership with the London and Middlesex Historical Society.
A violent family living in violent times.
In the 1840s, the Donnelly family immigrates from Ireland to the British province of Canada. Almost immediately problems develop as the patriarch of the family is sent to the Kingston Penitentiary for manslaughter, leaving his wife to raise their eight children on her own.
The children are raised in an incredibly violent community and cultivate a devoted loyalty to their mother and siblings, which often leads to problems with the law and those outside of the family.
The tensions between the family and their community escalate as the family’s enemies begin to multiply. The brothers go into business running a stagecoach line and repay all acts of violence perpetrated against them, which only worsens the situation. Refusing to take a backwards step, the Donnellys stand alone against a growing power base that includes wealthy business interests in the town of Lucan, the local diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, law authorities and a number of their neighbours.