IN CONVERSATION WITH MIKE DOWNIE
Few will forget August 20, 2016 as the Tragically Hip broadcast their final concert nationwide from their hometown of Kingston, Ontario. But it was in between the hits, the tears and the reverence, that frontman Gord Downie took a moment to raise another matter that had been consuming him for years. “…the people up north that we were trained our entire lives to ignore. Trained our entire lives to hear not a word of…”
Though his speech would last less than a minute, it set the stage for a remarkable final chapter that yielded a flurry of creative output before his untimely death 17 months later. Along with his brother, filmmaker Mike Downie, and the novelist Jeff Lemire, Gord would release Secret Path, an album and graphic novel that reintroduced Canadians to Chanie Wenjack, the 12-year-old Ojibway boy who died of exposure in 1966 after escaping his residential school and attempting to walk 600 kilometres home to Ogoki Post. This was followed by an animated film, live performances, documentaries, and the founding of the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, dedicated to cultural understanding and reconciliation.
Today, Mike Downie continues to keep Gord’s dream alive. As a co-founder of the Downie Wenjack Fund, his work provides access to education on the true history of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the history of residential schools, while encouraging reconciliation through programs and special events. This October, for Secret Path Week, Downie will be co-producing a star-studded re-creation of Secret Path Live that’s shaping up to be the cultural event of the season. To mark the occasion, The Collection’s Jeremy Finkelstein sat down with the local activist to discuss Secret Path, the Downie Wenjack Fund and his brother’s legacy.
The Collection: How did you first come to learn about Chanie Wenjack?
Mike Downie: I was driving and on CBC radio was a short documentary by Jodie Porter about this little boy running away from his residential school in 1966. And while I was listening, I thought, ‘residential school,’ I think I know what it is, but I didn’t know a story about a residential school. It kind of piqued my interest, and the part that really got me was when she mentioned that [Chanie] was trying to walk home along the tracks and that his home was 600 kilometres away. Of course, he didn’t make it, he died.
Gord and I were going out to lunch the next day, and by the time I went, I’d gone online. Jodie had materials on the CBC site, and I started reading about residential schools, about the system, about him. There was a very powerful article by Ian Adams in Maclean’s magazine. I printed that up, sat down for lunch with Gord, and gave him this article, The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack.
TC: What was Gord’s reaction?
MD: We were both stunned that we knew so little about something so large. Here’s a guy who’s been touring the country for years, meeting a lot of people…I’m a documentary filmmaker, I’ve been crossing the country telling people’s stories and I knew nothing about it. Between the two of us, we just felt like if we knew so little, there must be millions more like us.
There was also a sense that this story had such a universal message. It’s a very simple story: A boy trying to go home. We felt that was something that would resonate. When you have this kind of a national tragedy, with so many kids involved, sometimes big numbers bounce off the brain. I think in telling the story of one, it opens the door to something bigger. And we felt that this was the story that would unlock greater awareness of residential schools and about our treatment of Indigenous Peoples.
TC: When did you begin work on Secret Path?
MD: Immediately, but it followed a circuitous path. Our feeling was that we would make a live action film, so I put together a package and sent it to a couple writers. If we could get a novella, we could option it, have a script created and start working towards a film. But it went slowly and while we were waiting, Gord being Gord, started going through the research and writing. He wrote ten poems, and those poems told the story, in his way, of the boy leaving the school, and maybe about what happened along the way. The poems didn’t really get us going, but they became very important when Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene) called Gordie one day and said, “I’ve always wanted to make a record with you.” Gordie liked that, and Kevin said, “Have you got any material, songs you’ve been working on?” Gordie said, “No, I haven’t been writing any,’ and then thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got these poems.” That’s what they ended up taking into the studio.
It’s a good lesson. You start with an idea and then you get taken in another direction, yet all those decisions added up to something more important. We ended up with Gord’s record, we took those songs to Jeff Lemire, a fantastic graphic novelist, that ended up turning into the graphic novel. But everything took time. As a matter of fact, it took so much time, that by the time the record was done, the graphic novel was done, and we were still thinking if we could put this into some kind of film, Gordie got sick. And that put everything on hold.
TC: Gord referred to Chanie’s story as Canada’s story, saying we’re not the country we think we are. Can you elaborate?
MD: I think Gord was driving at the idea that as Canadians we think of ourselves as kind and welcoming people. But in many ways we’ve given ourselves a pass when we look at this issue of Indigenous Peoples. When you look at Canada’s history, whether it’s the Pass System or Residential School System, there was a plan. And the plan was to eliminate a race of people.
TC: How did the Wenjack family initially receive the Secret Path project?
MD: When Gord [went from] writing poems to going into the studio, we knew we had to reach out to Chanie’s family members. He had several sisters that are still with us. I tracked down Pearl Wenjack. I introduced myself, asked if she knew who Gord Downie was. She didn’t. I asked if she knew the Tragically Hip. She didn’t but there was a hint of recognition. So, I explained who Gord was and that we’d come upon her brother’s story and that Gord was potentially going to record these songs, that we wanted to tell a bigger story, and asked her what her feeling was about this. There was a pause, then she said, “I think that would be great. The only thing I ask is that you come here before this gets released, that you see where he lived in Ogoki Post, Marten Falls, and you see where he’s buried, and you meet us.” And that’s what we did.
TC: You followed this with a documentary. Did this help you cope with Gord’s illness?
MD: There are three films: Secret Path, Gord Downie — Secret Path in Concert, and Finding the Secret Path. Seeing Gord rehearse and perform on screen, giving it everything, was difficult. I worked with some really wonderful people, my producing partner Stuart Coxe, and great editors. It felt pretty important too…there was so much pain around Gord. When he went out on tour with the Hip, people took it really personally and felt a lot of grief, and with the films and the Downie Wenjack Fund, I thought that one thing [we were] able to do was to capture some of that so that it didn’t just leak into the ether. We were trying to direct people a little…if you’re that interested in Gord, maybe you can look deeper into something that he really cared about. We were always trying to give people a way to act rather than just feel bad about a great guy like my brother.
TC: What does the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund do?
MD: We’re trying to get Canadians to recognize the impact of residential schools and the impact of policies that affected Indigenous lives and Indigenous families. We’re trying to get more people to participate in reconciliation, and to recognize the possibility for our country. Depending on where you are, Indigenous people have been here for 10, 12 or 15,000 years. So, by going down this path of reconciliation, by imagining a country based on a foundation that didn’t start with colonial contact, but that was there before, that taught the earliest settlers so much, that affected the way they lived and affected a lot of what we think of as Canadian traits, there is an opportunity to go beyond reconciliation. Look at New Zealand and the way the Maori culture has been used effectively to give New Zealanders a sense of national identity. There are a lot of parallels there.
Our big programs are the Legacy Schools. We started creating this network where teachers and students are doing acts of reconciliation, bringing this teaching into the classroom, bringing elders into schools. More importantly, for people who aren’t sure how to get started, it gives them a way forward. We started a pilot project trying to get 200 schools, and we’re over 1000 in one year. Now, we have something called Artist’s Ambassadors. We have people like July Talk, the Arkells, Max Kerman, drop in to witness what these teachers and kids are doing. It’s typical for them to do a song or invite an Indigenous artist to do something with the kids. It’s about trying to inspire students, but also to recognize what they’re doing.
And we have Legacy Spaces where corporations or institutions take a room and convert it. There’s a poster of Chanie and Gord that tells the story of Secret Path, a plaque on the wall, and a smudge bowl. We’ve found that several of these partners have gone way beyond. They’ve taken a boardroom, they’ve commissioned Indigenous art. These are not front-line things but they draw people in. Maybe it’s the art, maybe it’s the story of Gord and Chanie. But the idea is that this is a start. Some will say, I’d like to walk down this path a little further.
TC: And you’re recreating the 2016 concert?
MD: At Roy Thompson Hall, October 19th, we are restaging Secret Path Live. We did it originally October 2016, and Gord and the Secret Path Band — Josh Finlayson, Kevin Drew, Kevin Hearn, Charles Spearin, and Dave Hamelin — performed the record below a massive screen of the animation, with the Wenjack family in the front rows. We’re doing that again. We’ve got the original band and we’ve invited different performers to handle the songs. We have Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tanya Tagaq, William Prince, Tom Wilson, Sam Roberts, July Talk, Whitehorse and Serena Ryder. It’s an unbelievable lineup.
There will be two parts. The first will be a combination of some performance and some of these artists doing other material, and the second will be Secret Path all the way through. It’s an important fundraiser, but also a great cultural event that brings people together, reminds people of this story, but also of the work that still needs to be done.
TC: At the last Tragically Hip concert, Gord said we’ve ignored the people of the north, then challenged the PM to lead. It’s been three years, have we seen improvement?
MD: Have Indigenous lives been improved in the last three years? I don’t think that much. There’s a much greater awareness that there’s this divide, that the quality of life is very different, life expectancy is different, teen suicide…the statistics don’t match up at all. I think Canadians are more aware of that. But look at Indigenous lives, and think about all the issues, and ask what it would be like if you took away residential schools. I’m not saying that’s the only piece that has contributed to this harm, but it’s a big one…that you have something run by the two most powerful organizations in the country for 150 years, the government and our religious institutions. And the whole idea was to take children from their home to teach them this other way of living. When you do something like this, generation after generation…it’s going to take time to repair. That kind of trauma doesn’t go away. A government program doesn’t fix that.
TC: What did it mean to you to create all of this with Gord during his final years?
MD: It feels good that, with what Gord was going through, we were able to harness that and turn it into something positive. When Gord was really ill, this gave us something, and my brother Patrick, to talk about and plan. Gord left me with some personal but some pretty direct instructions. He believed in this and would be happy to see where we are. He saw the potential in putting Secret Path in front of people. With reconciliation, it’s not a government program away from some goal. It requires everybody. It requires all Canadians to find their way to recognize what happened, to recognize the potential, and to see how things could be so different for us. I don’t think you can call yourself a great country when you’ve got part of your population living at the quality of life that many Indigenous people are living. Canada has the potential to be great, but as Gordie said, you gotta take care of everybody. So, to be able to try and do this, and it be a part of Gord’s legacy, makes me feel real good.
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Secret Path Live takes place at Roy Thompson Hall on October 19th, 2019. For more information on Secret Path Live and The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, visit www.downiewenjack.ca
