Reaction to Secret Path: "We're all sorry"
- Mike Gosselin | October 27, 2016
“We’re all sorry!”
It was shouted during a brief lull in Gord Downie’s performance of Secret Path at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. A show where, through animation and music, Gord told the story of Chanie Wenjack - a 12 year-old boy who died after trying to walk 600 km home from residential school in 1966.
“We’re all sorry!”
The words so audible, every one of the thirty-four members of Chanie’s family in attendance heard it. We all did. It’s as if they were blurted into a microphone on stage.
Perhaps it was one of the people who sparked up a joint thinking they were at a Hip show. Or maybe it was that age-old defensive response Aboriginal people deal with far too often. We’re sorry. Get over it. Now let’s forget what happened.
Forget the residential school experience tore families apart. Forget the attempted cultural genocide. Forget many of our family members were raped. Abused. Starved. Tortured. Forget residential schools operated until 1996.
You get free education and no tax. Just get over it.
On this night and three prior in Ottawa, however, Gord Downie did his part to make sure the Wenjack family knew Chanie’s story will never be forgotten. He also let residential school survivors, many of whom feel like dusty files in some cabinet locked away in time, know that their experience will not go unnoticed.
Related: FSIN applauds Downie using platform to support Indigenous issues
He heard Chanie’s story and refused to get over it. And he chose to tell it in a fashion that makes you feel like it was your kid alone on those tracks. Going home at all costs.
The price was, of course, his life…
“That’s all he wanted. To go home,” Chanie’s sister Pearl says in the CBC short documentary about Gord’s visit with the Wenjack family in Ogoki Post.
Call me biased if you will. I’m a Gord fan first. He’s released solo albums and a poetry book - all of which have had tremendous artistic impact on my life. That band he’s in is pretty good too.
I went to one of the shows this summer. It was largely touted as one of his last concerts due to his terminal cancer diagnosis. Took my eight-year old son. Rocked out with tears in my eyes. I didn’t think there was anything more Gord could do to inspire, encourage, make people think.
Then with a third of the country watching the last show live on CBC from the Hip’s Kingston home, he decided to do something about a dark history he felt all of Canada should know about. A history much of our country has been trained to ignore. And it just so happened he addressed his comments to someone in attendance.
“Well, you know, Prime Minister Trudeau’s got me, his work with First Nations. He’s got everybody. He’s going to take us where we need to go,” Downie said to the crowd as Trudeau stood at attention. He looked really apprehensive but bravely listened to his call to action.
“It’s going to take us 100 years to figure out what the hell went on up there but it isn’t cool and everybody knows that. It’s really, really bad. But we’re going to figure it out. You’re going to figure it out.”
Gord didn’t ask our government to do more. He demanded it. Obviously for those in the know, this was also foreshadowing at its finest. Gord wasn’t about to sit around and wait. He had a plan to do something he felt needed to be done. Do his best to make sure every Canadian who never heard about the residential school experience was going to listen.
He released the album, animated film and book called Secret Path - a project three years in the making. And soon after its release, people in the Aboriginal community admitted they were a bit jaded by the whole thing. Why does it take a famous white guy to shine light on the residential school experience?
Especially when pioneers like Tomson Highway have dedicated their lives to building bridges with the non-indigenous community by telling our stories, only to have their work go largely unnoticed by the mainstream population of our country.
For some, it may seem like Dances with Wolves all over again. The moniyas will save us! But with every objective morsel of my being, I don’t think Gord is trying to save anyone. He was simply affected by the tragic story of a 12 year-old boy trying to get home. Deeply affected. He started asking questions and discovered something unbelievable.
Ry Moran, Director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, summed it up best.
“Gord’s not telling Canada the stories of Indigenous peoples,” he said just before the show. “What his primary goal is, is calling out mainstream Canada and saying you guys have to pay attention to this. Non-Indigenous Canadians as a whole have a real responsibility to listen.”
“And sometimes it takes someone who’s non-Indigenous to talk to non-Indigenous peoples.”
And while I can’t get those echoing words out of my head - we’re all sorry - after some thought and reflection, I can’t help but believe it was a genuine response. That person wasn’t saying it as a defense mechanism. They weren’t asking anyone to get over anything. They were simply reacting to the profound experience they were having. They really were sorry. And saying it out loud for everyone to hear was the only thing they felt they could do in that moment.
That, my friends, will be Gord’s legacy…
I feel here, here and here
I hurt here, here and here
I lived here, here and here
I died here, here and here
You sign here, here and here
- An excerpt from Secret Path - Gord Downie
Watch Secret Path at www.cbc.ca/secretpath
Visit https://downiewenjack.ca to find out what you can do to help.