Money for this project goes to the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Project. More sad than angry, though you'll feel that, too, I hope. Downie's songs are spare, lovely, sad, haunting. The images are spare, lovely, sad, haunting. Knowing Lemire's work with father-son stories, one image that drives Chanie is of his father, and fishing back home. He is driven by images of home, flashbacks from his earlier life. Chanie's story, as The Secret Path has it, is a simple one, with simple, sad images of his walking along railroad tracks. Lost kids, neglected by the rest of us, increasingly.īut Chanie is not those kids. Kids who are lost, literally and figuratively.Ĭhanie's story gets mixed up in my head with all the kids I see homeless on the streets of Chicago, thousands of them, some of them riding the trains all day, just to stay warm, begging for change or food from folks along the way. It's not the same thing, I know, but it colors my reading of Chanie's story. He didn't die, no, and he isn't being re-educated, but he isn't doing anything in school he can relate to, he wants to be outside, working with his hands. As with Chanie, my son walked out of the school and tried to walk home in freezing weather the other day, without a coat or gloves, taking no food or water, and walked several miles toward home until the police picked him up and an EMT treated him for near-frozen hands. He died along the way, frozen to death.Ĭhanie's story gets mixed up in my head with my own teenaged son, 17, who attends a "therapeutic day treatment" school (for kids with special needs) that he walks away from once in awhile. There are now, I find, lots of versions of the story of this kid, who sort of has come to symbolize the tragedy of the Canadian "re-education" programme that mirrors the (tragic) one my old US of A set in place, to rip kids off reservations and un-Indian them.Ĭhanie, misnamed Charlie by his teachers, in the way white western people have in wanting non-western people to have western-sounding names, died on October 22, 1966, walking the railroad tracks, escaping from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School to return home, 400 miles away. So, Secret Path 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. And you get more than a book when you buy it you get the 96 page large format graphic novel by Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, Essex County), you get the lyrics to ten songs by Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie (now terminally ill with brain cancer), you get a link to all the music, and their notes, a letter from Downie, and a link to a 2-hour documentary about Wenjack, others, and the ongoing Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I edited my original review a bit here and there, too.ġ2/25/16: I'm not a big marketing guy here, but just buy this book.
And you get more than a book when you buy it you get the 96 page large format graphic novel by Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, Essex County), you get the lyrics to te 10/14/17: I re-read this book and participated in this multi-media project as part of my Fall 2017 YAL class, also read in conjunction with Wenjack, by Joseph Boyden, which is also about the same kid, Chanie Wenjack. 12/25/16: I'm not a big marketing guy here, but just buy this book. I edited my original review a bit here and there, too.
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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.moreġ0/14/17: I re-read this book and participated in this multi-media project as part of my Fall 2017 YAL class, also read in conjunction with Wenjack, by Joseph Boyden, which is also about the same kid, Chanie Wenjack. Chanie, misnamed Charlie by his teachers, was a young boy who died on October 22, 1966, walking the railroad tracks, tryin Secret Path is a ten song 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.Ĭhanie, 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. Secret Path is a ten song 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.
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