While Oct. 22 in Sudbury was bright and sunny, if a bit cool, it was a far cry from what young Chanie Wenjack experienced over his final few days of life in 1966.
On Sunday afternoon, more than a dozen Sudburians gathered at the Elizabeth Street parking lot in Bell Park for the annual Walk for Wenjack event, hosted by the Coniston Historical Group.
The event saw participants walk along the Jim Gordon boardwalk in Wenjack’s memory, and in the memory of all those who lived through a residential school experience, while stopping periodically so Jason Marcon, the head of the historical group, shared pieces of local Indigenous history.
“This is my third year doing it. Obviously being an historian, I got interested in that. And starting to do some deep dives in history you’re getting into a bit more of the Indigenous history of the area and I didn’t see it around publicly,” Marcon said Sunday. “Quite honestly, history doesn’t begin the minute a city or a town or a village starts; there’s history before it, and we have to let everybody know what that history was before the first settlers called this area ‘Sudbury’.
“We want to know who was here before us and we want to know about them and what they accomplished.”
Marcon used educational materials from the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund to help plan the event.
Charles “Chanie” Wenjack’s story is tragic. As related by Trent University, he was a young Anishinaabe boy from Ogoki Post in Marten Falls who was sent to the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora in 1963 at age nine.
The school was run by the Women’s Society of the Presbyterian Church. Chanie was among several children who ran away from the school on Oct 16, 1966 in an attempt to get home. All of the children, save Chanie, were soon caught by authorities, but the 12-year-old eluded capture and tried to continue to make his escape, a 600-kilometre journey back to Ogoki Post.
Wenjack’s body was found beside the railway tracks north of Kenora on Oct. 22, a week after he fled.
Illustrative of the tragic legacy of the residential school system, his story is detailed in the book “The Secret Path”, by Gordon Downie of The Tragically Hip, and Jeff Lemire. It is also the basis for the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund, which raises money to improve the lives of Indigenous people in Canada.
“By knowing the history, we can avoid repeating the history,” Marcon said. “We want everybody to know that it does happen in your own backyard, and not in some far off land.”
Marcon carries a copy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action in his pocket. He sees the Walk for Wenjack event as a means of honouring some of those calls to action.
At the 2022 walk, Marcon called Wenjack’s story “the most powerful story we’ve seen.”
Although there are countless impactful personal stories about the residential school system, Marcon said Chanie Wenjack’s tragic death is one that resonates with both people and the media, so he said it serves as a good starting point for education.
Mark Gentili is the editor of Sudbury.com.
