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Archival description
Journalist
P112/B · Series · 1908, 1961-1987, 1994-2002
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The series provides information on Brian McKenna’s journalistic career, from its beginning as reporter for the Loyola News in the 1960s to his regular writings for The Montreal Star from 1967 to 1985, where he contributed especially as parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa and on the coverage of Expo ‘67 in Montreal. The series also contains articles McKenna contributed to various magazines and The Canadian Encyclopedia, and book reviews, as well as research material and the manuscript for his book on Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, published in 1981.

The series is organized into the following subseries:
• B1 Loyola News
• B2 The Montreal Star
• B3 Magazine and encyclopedia articles.
• B4 Jean Drapeau - book.

The series contains newspaper clippings, newspapers (among others several issues of Loyola News), research material, correspondence, and notes, but also photographs, drawings, proof prints, drafts, and a printed copy of McKenna’s book Jean Drapeau, and a replica of the satellite Sputnik from the United States Pavilion at Expo 67.

The Montreal Star
P112/B2 · Subseries · 1908, 1965-1974, 1985
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The sub-series consists of Brian McKenna’s writings for The Montreal Star, from 1967 to 1985, including, among a broad variety of other subjects, McKenna’s coverage of Expo ‘67 in Montreal.

The series contains mainly newspaper clippings, newspapers, and notes, but also photographs, drawings, and a replica of the satellite Sputnik from the United States Pavilion at Expo 67.

Brian McKenna fonds
P112 · Fonds · 1908-2018, predominant 1963-2017

The Brian McKenna fonds provides an insight in Brian McKennas career and accomplishments as journalist, author, filmmaker, and producer, from McKenna’s time as a reporter for the Loyola News in the 1960s to his latest works of independent filmmaking. Further, the fond is a valuable source for detailed background information on many events and personages of the twentieth century.
The fonds documents Brian McKenna’s work on various films, covering documentaries that he produced for the CBC, and especially for The Fifth Estate, as well as independent productions, and even film proposals that finally never had been produced.
As such, the fonds’ content spans from the 13-minute documentary Thomas D’Arcy McGee, McKenna’s first film that he wrote and directed for the CBC in 1973, to his later works as an independent filmmaker, as Newfoundland at Armageddon, produced in 2016.
The fonds also gives an overview of McKenna’s writings. It covers his articles related to Expo ‘67 in Montreal, his time as parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa, as well as his book on Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, published in 1981.
The fonds is organized into the following series:
• P112/A. Personal records and student activities
• P112/B. Journalist
• P112/C. Involvement in the journalistic community
• P112/D. Speeches
• P112/E. Awards
• P112/F. Administration and personnel
• P112/G. Documentaries

The fonds contains, but is not limited to, film scripts, photographs, newsletters, reports, meeting minutes, newspaper articles, speeches, publications, correspondence, statues, plaques, a pewter, a medal, awards programs, certificates, CVs, pamphlets, project proposals, sound recordings, a webpage template, videos, interviews, research material, drafts, notes, court records, financial records, posters, newspapers (among others several issues of Loyola News), drawings, proof prints, and a replica of the satellite Sputnik from the United States Pavilion at Expo 67.

McKenna, Brian
CBC documentaries
P112/G4 · Subseries · 1915-1919, 1963-1995, 1999-2016
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The subseries provides information on documentaries Brian McKenna produced for the CBC. It includes research material, publications, work video, correspondence, notes, objects and other records related to the following documentaries:

And Then You Die
CBC-docudrama on the Montréal underworld, inspired by the true story of Irish gangsters in the West end of Montréal using Hell’s Angels as mercenaries to build a cocaine empire. It was broadcast internationally and won a pair of Gemini awards.

FLQ

The Great War

His Worship, Jean Drapeau

The Killing Ground
A two-hour film on the 59,000 Canadians who died in the First World War. For this production, McKenna teamed up with his youngest brother Terence. The film won the Anik award for best CBC documentary in 1988.

Trudeau Memoirs

P112/A · Series · 1915-1919, 1927, 1945-2002
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The series provides background information on Brian McKenna's education from his days at St. Thomas High School to Loyola College, as well as his experience as a Boy Scout. It also provides information on members of his family.

The series contains personal correspondence, curricula vitae, notes, essays, photographs, press clippings, a year book, and other documents.

Documentaries
P112/G · Series · 1915-1919, 1936-2018
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The series provides information on various documentaries Brian McKenna worked on throughout his career. It covers documentaries that he produced for the CBC, and especially for The Fifth Estate, as well as independent productions, and even film proposals that finally never had been produced. The series spans from the 13-minute documentary Thomas D’Arcy McGee, McKenna’s first film that he wrote and directed for CBC City at 6 in 1973, to his later works as an independent filmmaker, as Newfoundland at Armageddon.
The series contains most of the research material gathered in the preparation of the documentaries as well as occasional comments, reviews and other feedback, and awards received.
Finally, the series includes Brian McKenna’s contribution to CBC radio in 1971.

The series is organized into the following subseries:
• G1 Film proposals and ideas
• G2 CBC radio scripts
• G3 CBC The City at 6
• G4 CBC documentaries
• G5 CBC Current Affairs : The Fifth Estate
• G6 Independently produced documentaries.

The series contains, but is not limited to, scripts, interviews, research material, drafts, notes, correspondence, press clippings, film proposals, monographs, court records, photographs, publications, objects, a report, videos, sound recordings, financial records, posters, and other documents.

P112/G5 · Subseries · 1936-2018
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The subseries provides information on documentaries Brian McKenna worked on or produced for The Fifth Estate.
The subseries contains research materials, monographs, notes, scripts, drafts of documentaries and correspondence, court records, work copies of videos, a sound recording, and other documents.

The subseries includes the following documentaries:

Apparitions
In January 1988 McKenna travelled to Yugoslavia to investigate the claims of six peasant children that they were experiencing apparitions of the Virgin Mary every day at 6:45 pm, and the impact on their small Serbian village.

Arnold Expedition Reenactment

Belugas
This film documents attempts to save the small white whales from massive pollution of their St. Lawrence River habitat.

Bismark

Bourrassa and Lévesque

Car Rackets
This investigation into corruption and cover-up in the auto industry was produced by McKenna in his first season at The Fifth Estate.

The Cardinal
Profile of Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger as he travelled to the Thai-Cambodian border to draw attention to the terrible plight of refugees fleeing the killing fields.

CBW

Children of the Lost
The story of two Argentine doctors attempting to heal the trauma in children whose parents were killed or disappeared during the so-called dirty war.

Collaborators
With researcher and associate producer Oleh Rumak, McKenna investigated how top Slovak officials from the Nazi Collaborationist government ended up in Canada. The film, code-named Slovaks II has not been shown to the public.

A Cruel Place
The film documents the state-sponsored terrorism during the Civil War in El Salvador.

Death Squad

Death in Tripoli
Film on the violent and mysterious death of Canadian Christopher Halens, a young Southam journalist in Libya.

Empress of Ireland
Documentary on the Empress of Ireland, a Titanic -size steamship which sank in the St. Lawrence River

Fallen Star
The history of the final days of the century-old newspaper, The Montreal Star.

Gypsies (never produced)

Heroin

The Hooded Men
In 1982, when Argentina returned to democracy, McKenna took newspaper publisher Jacobo Timmerman back to the jail on the outskirts of Buenos Aires where he had been held and tortured.

Iran Drug Film

A Journey Back
Investigation on Nazi collaborators hiding in Canada, focusing on the story of New York off-Broadway producer Jack Garfein, brought back to his hometown in Slovakia for the first time and then to the Auschwitz and Birkenhau death camps to discover his past. In the film Garfein confronts the gauleiter who had killed his family.

Lévesque in New York
Quebec’s newly elected and first separatist premier’s trip to New York to try to reassure nervous investors.

McGarr
Examination of the stress that creates among police the highest rate of alcoholism, divorce and suicide of any profession, seen through the eyes of a Montréal police officer.

Making of a Saint

Marathon Man Jerome Drayton

Mirabel

The Money Pit
Investigation of attempts made to find buried treasure in the mysterious and secret man-made passages of Nova Scotia’s Oak Island

Murder of Hilda Murrer
Investigation of the murder of this eccentric English country woman whose death may have been linked to secrets surrounding the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands war.

Noah's Ark
Astronaut James Irwin was leading an expedition of Christian fundamentalist Americans in search of the remains of Noah’s Ark at Turkey’s Mount Ararat, to prove that the Bible and Creation story are literally true.

The Old Man and the C
A profile of Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and his claims for the healing properties of Vitamin C.

Olympic Connection
In his first season at The Fifth Estate, McKenna did investigations of corruption during the construction for the 1976 Montréal
Olympic Games

Olympic Tower

Panzers on the Prairies
Story of German Army building tanks in Alberta

Papa Plouffe
A profile of a character in Roger Lemelin’s Les Plouffe series (CBC).

Peroff Mounties

Pipe Major

The Plot

Political Corruption

The Power and the Glory
Inquiry into the politics surrounding the building of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project.

Referendums
A documentary looking at referendums, including the 1948 vote that brought Newfoundland into Canadian Confederation and leading up to the 1980 referendum on Québec independence and sovereignty association and the “Yvette” women’s movement, as well as the slick methods used in California referendums.

René Lévesque

Richard Blass
In his first season at The Fifth Estate, McKenna started with a film about a mobster named Richard Blass.

Robert F. Kennedy

The Rocket at 50
In his first season at The Fifth Estate McKenna made a feature on hockey star Maurice “The Rocket” Richard as he turned 50.

Rosie Douglas
A look at mobster Rosie Douglas.

Secret Cargo
Documentary on allegations that Pakistan was attempting to smuggle and import through Canada and the United States key components for the construction of an Islamic atomic bomb.

Secret Test
Film on the CIA-sponsored brainwashing experiments in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s on unsuspecting psychiatric patients at the Royal Victoria Hospital / Allen Memorial Psychiatric Institute in Montréal.

Shooting the Messenger
Film on the torture and murder of Latin American journalists and the occasional foreign correspondent.

State of Siege
Inquiry into communist and fascist terrorism in Italy including the infamous Red Brigade.

Sunshine Soldiers

Veliotis

VIP

Who Shot JFK?
In 1978, McKenna wrote and directed the first national television documentary challenging the conclusions of the official report into the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963, Dallas and After. It was followed by three more documentaries on new evidence: In 1979, Crossfire reported the conclusion of a Congressional Committee that Kennedy was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy. The Coffin was Empty (198?) is a testimony that medical evidence was tampered with during and after the autopsy of Kennedy. McKenna produced Who Shot JFK?, a program summarizing the evidence, on the 20th anniversary of the assassination.

P112/G6 · Subseries · 1944, 1950, 1956, 1963-2018
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The subseries provides information on documentaries Brian McKenna worked on or produced as an independent producer.

The subseries contains interviews, research material, monographs, notes, publications, photographs, scripts, drafts of documentaries, correspondence, court records, financial records, posters, sound recordings, videos and other documents.

The subseries relates to the following documentaries :

  • Addiction for Sale
  • Battlefield Quebec (Plains of Abraham)
  • Big Sugar
    Documentary on the political history of the sugar industry
  • The Bribe or the Bullet
    Documentary on the impact of narcotics trafficking on Mexico
  • Chiefs
  • Famine and Shipwreck
  • La fin de la Nouvelle-France
  • Fire and Ice: The Rocket Richard Riot
  • Jean Drapeau
  • Korea : The Unfinished War
  • Little Viper
  • Migraine
  • Newfoundland at Armageddon
  • Nuclear War
  • Secret World of Gold
  • Theatre Schmeatre
  • Tycoon
  • The Valour and the Horror
    Directed and co-written with his brother Terence McKenna, The Valour and the Horror summarizes a three- year inquiry into three
    Second World War battles. The films were honoured with five Gemini Awards.
  • War of 1812
  • The War Reporters
    A Lauron Productions (Toronto) documentary on abuses suffered by journalists in Argentina, among them Jacobo Timmerman, as
    well as the danger and distress they face while covering war and revolution.
  • A Web of War
    A series of documentary films on the Second World War : The War at Sea (2 hours), a critical examination of Canadian naval
    leadership, A Web of War (1 h), an emotional tribute to the women of the Warsaw uprising, and the Polish division fighting under
    Canadian command,
  • A Battle Lost, story of how Nazi U-Boats blockaded the St. Lawrence River during WWII.
P112/F2 · Subseries · 1944, 1954, 1979-2007
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The sub-series contains information related to McKenna’s production companies, including personnel and equipment.
McKenna Purcell Productions Inc. was formed in the fall of 1980. It was superceded by Wartime Productions Inc. in 1989. Both companies were incorporated by Brian McKenna and Susan Purcell.

The sub-series contains, among other documents, annual reports, financial statements, certificates, correspondence, a webpage template, CVs, pamphlets, newspaper articles, advertisements, photographs, project proposals, sound recordings, a video, and documents related to the companies’ incorporations.

Administration and personnel
P112/F · Series · 1944, 1954, 1975-2004, 2007
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The series provides information on Wartime Production and McKenna Purcell Productions, two companies incorporated by Brian McKenna and Susan Purcell, and used to produce several films, as The Valour and the Horror. The series also provides information on administrative aspects of the Fifth Estate, people McKenna worked with or contracted for his documentaries, and the technology used by McKenna in the 1980s.

The series is organized into the following subseries:
• F1 Fifth Estate
• F2 McKenna Purcell Productions / Wartime Production

The series contains, among other documents, annual reports, budgets, newspaper articles, financial statements, certificates, correspondence, CVs, pamphlets, advertisements, photographs, project proposals, sound recordings, a webpage template, a video, and documents related to the companies’ incorporations.

Film proposals and ideas
P112/G1 · Subseries · 1951-1957, 1974-2002
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The subseries provides information on documentaries submitted to or developed by Brian McKenna between 1974 and 2002. Most of these proposals were not produced or further developed.

The subseries contains, among others, research material, drafts, notes, correspondence, press clippings, film proposals, photographs, a report, and videos.

Loyola News
P112/B1 · Subseries · 1961-1969, 1975
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The sub-series illustrates Brian McKennas journalistic debuts with the Loyola News in the 1960s.
The Sub-series contains mainly newspaper clippings, several issues of Loyola News, a photograph, and notes.

P112/B3 · Subseries · 1970-2002
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The sub-series presents McKenna’s contributions to magazines (The Gazette, The Last Post, Weekend Magazine, Literary Review of Canada, MacLean’s) and The Canadian Encyclopedia, including book reviews in The Gazette.

The sub-series contains newspaper articles, a magazine, and correspondence.

Awards
P112/E · Series · 1970-1993, 2003-2010
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The series provides information on awards Brian McKenna received between 1970 and 2010.

The series contains correspondence, newspaper clippings, statues, plaques, a pewter, a medal, and several ACTRA Awards programs.

CBC radio scripts
P112/G2 · Subseries · 1971
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The subseries provides information on Brian McKenna's contribution to CBC radio in 1971. It contains scripts of news coverage of political activities at the time when McKenna was parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa.

CBC The City at 6
P112/G3 · Subseries · 1972-1974
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The subseries provides information on two short documentaries Brian McKenna produced between 1972 and 1974. It contains incomplete scripts for The 1974 Municipal Election and Thomas D'Arcy McGee.
Thomas D’Arcy McGee was McKenna’s first film, that he wrote and directed for CBC City at 6 in 1973, a thirteen- minutes documentary on the assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee.

Fifth Estate
P112/F1 · Subseries · 1975-1988
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The sub-series contains information about administrative aspects of the Fifth Estate.

The sub-series contains, among others, budgets, newspaper articles, correspondence, an ID- and a business card.

Involvement with Committees
P112/C1 · Subseries · 1981-1988
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The sub-series provides information on the Latin American Committee, the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), and the Committee to Protect Journalists, as well as Brian McKenna’s involvement within these organizations.

The sub-series contains newsletters, reports, books and pamphlets, notes, meeting minutes, newspaper articles, and correspondence.

P112/C · Series · 1981-1989, 2000-2002
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The series provides information on Brian McKenna's involvement with the Latin American Committee, the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), and the Committee to Protect Journalists (on human rights). It also includes his involvement as Max Bell Fellowship professor at the University of Regina School of Journalism.

P0112/C1 Involvement in Committees.
P0112/C2 Max Bell Fellowship

The series contains newsletters, reports, books and pamphlets, meeting minutes, newspaper articles, correspondence, notes, film proposals, and an open letter.

Speeches
P112/D · Series · 1981-1995
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The series provides information on speeches and conferences given by Brian McKenna from 1981 to 1995, including a video of the Canadian National Debating Seminar of 1995 when Brian McKenna was asked to debate against a conservative economist on supporting the arts.

The series contains a newsletter, speeches, newspaper clippings, publications, notes, correspondence, and a video.

Max Bell Fellowship
P112/C2 · Subseries · 1988-1989, 2000-2002
Part of Brian McKenna fonds

The sub-series contains information about the Max Bell Fellowship and student proposals.

The sub-series contains, among others, newspaper articles, correspondence, notes, film proposals, and an open letter.