Just weeks after his last scheduled live performance, beloved Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie is preparing to release a new solo album with an accompanying graphic novel and animated film inspired by the tragedy of Canada’s residential school system.
“Secret Path” tells the story of a 12-year-old First Nations boy named Chanie Wenjack (who was misnamed Charlie by his teachers), who died in 1966 after running away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario.
Downie says he discovered Wenjack’s story from a 1967 Maclean’s magazine article entitled “The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack.”
“I never knew Chanie, but I will always love him,” Downie said Friday in a statement. “Chanie haunts me. His story is Canada’s story. This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were.”
Downie recounts in a news release how the boy died beside railroad tracks trying to escape the school and trying to walk to his home 650 kilometres away.
Downie began “Secret Path” as 10 poems that were fleshed into the 10 songs for the album, which was recorded over two sessions near Kingston in November and December 2013.
Downie revealed in May that he suffers from an incurable form of brain cancer (glioblastoma) and last month completed the emotional “Man Machine Poem” Canadian tour with the Tragically Hip in his hometown of Kingston, Ontario.
Gord Downie’s “Secret Path” album and 88-page graphic novel will be released on October 18 across Canada and the film will air on CBC on October 23. Proceeds from the album and graphic novel will go to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Winnipeg.
