Proceeds from Secret Path will go towards 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 NCTR is a project dedicated to preserving the often difficult history of the residential school system in Canada and its harmful effects on First Nations peoples.
Secret Path follows the story of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old boy who died while running away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario in 1966.
"Chanie haunts me," wrote Downie in a statement about the project. "His story is Canada’s story. This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were. History will be rewritten. We are all accountable, but this begins in the late 1800s and goes to 1996. 'White' Canada knew — on somebody’s purpose — nothing about this. We weren’t taught it in school; it was hardly ever mentioned.
"All of those Governments, and all of those Churches, for all of those years, misused themselves. They hurt many children. They broke up many families. They erased entire communities. It will take seven generations to fix this. Seven. Seven is not arbitrary. This is far from over. Things up north have never been harder. Canada is not Canada. We are not the country we think we are."
The album, which comes out Oct. 18, was produced by Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew and The Stills' Dave Hamelin. It features Social Scene's Charles Spearin on bass, Do Make Say Think's Ohad Benchetrit on lap steel/guitar, Barenaked Ladies' Kevin Hearn on piano, and long-time Tragically Hip associate Dave “Billy Ray” Koster on drums.
The 88-page graphic novel, illustrated by Jeff Lemire, also arrives on Oct. 18 and will be available as part of a deluxe album vinyl and book package and as a book and album download package.
The animated film version of Secret Path will air on Oct. 23 at 9 p.m. (9:30 NT) on CBC as an hour-long commercial-free special. That date is significant because it marks the fiftieth anniversary of the morning Chanie’s body was found frozen beside the railroad tracks only 12 miles into his journey.
Downie, who's most famously known as the lead singer of The Tragically Hip, made it public in late May that he had been diagnosed with gioblastoma brain cancer.
The Secret Path project isn't the only way Downie has been using his art for good. The Tragically Hip's recent tour across Canada, which many fans believe will be the band's last, raised more than $500,000 for the Gord Downie Fund for Brain Cancer Research at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
Read Gord Downie's full statement below:
Mike Downie introduced me to Chanie Wenjack; he gave me the story from Ian Adams’ Maclean’s magazine story dating back to February 6, 1967, “The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack.”
Chanie, 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 walk home. Chanie’s home was 400 miles away. He didn’t know that. 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. I never knew Chanie, but I will always love him.
Chanie haunts me. His story is Canada’s story. This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were. History will be rewritten. We are all accountable, but this begins in the late 1800s and goes to 1996. “White” Canada knew — on somebody’s purpose — nothing about this. We weren’t taught it in school; it was hardly ever mentioned.
All of those Governments, and all of those Churches, for all of those years, misused themselves. They hurt many children. They broke up many families. They erased entire communities. It will take seven generations to fix this. Seven. Seven is not arbitrary. This is far from over. Things up north have never been harder. Canada is not Canada. We are not the country we think we are.
I am trying in this small way to help spread what Murray Sinclair said, “This is not an aboriginal problem. This is a Canadian problem. Because at the same time that aboriginal people were being demeaned in the schools and their culture and language were being taken away from them and they were being told that they were inferior, they were pagans, that they were heathens and savages and that they were unworthy of being respected – that very same message was being given to the non-aboriginal children in the public schools as well… They need to know that history includes them.” (Murray Sinclair, Ottawa Citizen, May 24, 2015)
I have always wondered why, even as a kid, I never thought of Canada as a country — It’s not a popular thought; you keep it to yourself — I never wrote of it as so. 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.”
Watch the 'Secret Path' film trailer
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