Secret Path is a ten song digital download album by Gord Downie with
a graphic novel by illustrator Jeff Lemire that tells the story of
Chanie "Charlie" Wenjack, a twelve-year-old boy who died in flight from
the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School fifty years ago.
Secret Path is a ten song digital download album by Gord Downie with a
graphic novel by illustrator Jeff Lemire that tells the story of Chanie
"Charlie" Wenjack, a twelve-year-old boy who died in flight from the
Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School fifty years ago.
Chanie, misnamed Charlie by his teachers, was a young boy who died on
October 22, 1966, walking the railroad tracks, trying to escape from the
Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School to return home. Chanie's home
was 400 miles away. He didn't know that. He didn't know where it was,
nor how to find it, but, like so many kids--more than anyone will be
able to imagine--he tried.
Chanie's story is Canada's story. We are not the country we thought we
were. History will be rewritten. We are all accountable. Secret Path
acknowledges a dark part of Canada's history--the long suppressed
mistreatment of Indigenous children and families by the residential
school system--with the hope of starting our country on a road to
reconciliation. Every year as we remember Chanie Wenjack, the hope for
Secret Path is that it educates all Canadians young and old on this
omitted part of our history, urging our entire nation to play an active
role in the preservation of Indigenous lives and culture in Canada.
The next hundred years are going to be painful as we come to know Chanie
Wenjack and thousands like him--as we find out about ourselves, about
all of us--but only when we do can we truly call ourselves, "Canada."
