![]() Gord played goalie for Amherstview’s hockey team, which won a provincial B-level championship. Gord was the fourth of five children: older siblings Mike, Charlyn and Paula, and younger brother Patrick. 6, 1964, in Amherstview, Ont., just slightly west of Kingston, to Lorna and Edgar, a travelling salesman turned real estate developer. It was a Terry Fox story with a twist: a story where the protagonist completes his goal before the disease gets the better of him.ĭownie was born on Feb. 20, 2016, six months after Downie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. That’s what even newcomers discovered during the CBC broadcast of the Tragically Hip’s final show on Aug. Video clips don’t do justice to the energy in the room generated by a performer who communicated more with a flick of the finger than anyone else’s high kicks. As could anyone who watched him command 40,000 people at any given outdoor appearance during the 1990s, singing songs that were summer soundtracks for an entire generation. Anyone who managed to catch him fronting the Tragically Hip in 1985, playing covers at a roadhouse in Renfrew, Ont., could tell you that. Gordon Edgar Downie was one of the most riveting and mystifying performers in rock’n’roll history. Then sit back and see what happens, because it’s not like you can control it. The poet whose metaphors had inspired generations of rock’n’roll fans had nothing more to say-with words, anyway.ĭo the work. He stoked the fire until sparks came out. Then he got up, silently, walked over to a pile of wood, picked up two logs, and returned to put them on the fire. And it seems like you get up there every single time and give it!” “Gord, I always wanted to ask you: how do you get the energy to make it so real every day? I think if I put myself out there like that, on the line, and make people emotionally connect with me, I feel like I couldn’t ever do it again, because I’d get bored or I just couldn’t summon the same amount of emotion. There were a few others there, though, most of whom knew enough to respect the privacy of the cancer-stricken man who had travelled hundreds of kilometres to disappear. ![]() Just a few close friends on a starry night in front of a campfire. It would turn out to be the last show of his band’s 30-year, multi-million-selling, award-winning career, a fate many suspected at the time.īut things were much quieter now. Where some go to get lost.ĭays earlier, this quiet man had held much of the entire nation rapt, millions watching as he summoned all his strength to tackle his terminal condition, to fend back-however briefly-the inevitability of death. In the remote north, in a land where the many not born there dare not go. Note: This resource is not considered an authentic First Peoples resource.He was on a fishing trip. Recommended resource for English First Peoples grades 10-11 for units on Childhood through the Eyes of Indigenous Writers and First Steps - Exploring Residential School and Reconciliation through Children's Literature. Proceeds from Secret Path will be donated to The Gord Downie Secret Path Fund for Truth and Reconciliation via The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) at The University of Manitoba. 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.” 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. 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. We are not the country we thought we were. 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.Ĭhanie’s story is Canada’s story. 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.
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