Gord Downie commands our attention. A poet who knows his place within his art, he has kept Canada hanging on his words for decades. And now he may be giving us his last.
With the release of “Secret Path,” Downie brings to fruition a project that began in 2014, long before he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
“Secret path” is a multimedia endeavour recounting the tragic fate of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old boy who died in 1966 on a 600-kilometre trek home to escape the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ont.
“Chanie haunts me.” Downie writes in a statement on the “Secret Path” website. “His story is Canada’s story.”
It’s heartbreaking to think of a young boy searching for a way home to a family that never abandoned him, to escape from a system that failed him, only to end up dead on the side of a railroad track, malnourished and frozen. It is a gripping story in that it so eloquently exposes a chapter of stark inhumanity in Canada’s past.
In that past, Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples did not have the influence they have today. They did not have Supreme Court judgements enshrining their right to be consulted on decisions that affect their territory or place in Canada, or the power to shape the programs and policies applied to them, and certainly not a federal government that would apologize for the misery it had inflicted on them through the residential school system.
The dark chapter of Canada’s residential schools marks an injustice that will take time and sincerity to recompense, a process still in its early years.
