It’s been ten years since The Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie made it his final mission in life to help Canada reconcile with its Indigenous people via his multi-media Secret Path project.
Gord, who died at the age of 53 from brain cancer in 2017, staged a benefit concert in October 2016 at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, musically sharing the story of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Ojibwe boy who died in 1966 while escaping from an Ontario residential school.
The tragedy formed the basis of Downie’s Secret Path, his fifth and final solo album, released the same month as the concert. Secret Path also became a graphic novel and a TV movie.
But his brother Mike Downie, a founding board member of the Gord Downie Chanie Wenjack Fund, said Gord’s feelings on the subject started much longer than a decade ago.
“He just always had this feeling that there was something missing really, as a boy growing up in our little town (Amherstview, Ont.),” Mike told the Toronto Sun .
“Part of the story that wasn’t being told. There was something that was fundamentally missing in this country. And then he, I guess, as an adult figured it out what it was. This Indigenous piece of our country that had just not been a part of the conversation really ever. And so that for him, as an individual, there was something that really felt that he was maybe fulfilling some kind of destiny, something that had been tugging at him for a long time.”
10th anniversary Secret Path concert and week
To mark the decade that has passed there will be a 10th anniversary Secret Path concert on Oct. 23 at the Concert Hall in Toronto featuring Indigenous artists including Tom Wilson, William Prince and more doing both Secret Path and Hip songs (Ticket are $89 via Eventbrite), plus a Secret Path week, (Oct. 17-22) encouraging Canadians to do something towards reconciliation.
“Every year we have Secret Path week,” said Mike. “Oct 17, which is date Gord passed, and Oct. 22, which is when Chanie passed. But this year, of course, we wanted to do something really special and to hear the Secret Path songs done by Indigenous artists, all of which are those artist ambassadors who’ve gone into schools on our behalf, and recorded Secret Path songs. So yeah, I’m really excited about this opportunity. We just want to remind (people that) we’ve been doing this now for ten years. We’re still here.”
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The man who walks amongst the stars
Indigenous reconciliation certainly seemed to be a passion for Gord who was given the name “the man who walks amongst the stars,” by Indigenous leaders during an emotional ceremony in Ottawa in December 2016.
“It was really important,” said Mike. “Gord completed the final (Hip) tour (in 2016), which really had the whole country paying attention, listening and tuning into the final show . (The Downie clan was at family wedding when the CBC just rebroadcast it two weeks ago on Aug. 22.) At the final show, he made really just two comments and they’re both about the need for this country to reconcile with Indigenous people. It was a real moment I think. He said a few broad things like, ‘People that we’ve been trained to ignore.’ He didn’t know how much time he had left but he really leaned into this with all the energy that he had. I would have loved him to be around a bit longer to see what we’ve done.”