The many Canadians who don’t really know our nation’s complete history were not judged or branded as wilfully ignorant. “Okay?” he asked, and some in the room cheered in spite of the weight of what our senses and emotional cores were being exposed to.Īs a story and a concert, Secret Path came together as a poignant, sad, infuriating, poetic, moving and lovely expression for the Wenjacks. “Applause will get harder, and that’s okay,” Downie said after a few songs. They performed majestically. Downie, terminally ill with brain cancer, paced the stage, pranced gently and sang powerfully, employing his distinctively dynamic range as a singer. A film was screened in real time above Downie and his band – Kevin Drew, Dave Hamelin and Charles Spearin of Broken Social Scene, Kevin Hearn of Barenaked Ladies and Josh Finlayson of the Skydiggers – essentially live-scored it, playing all 10 songs from Downie’s fifth solo record, Secret Path. Gord’s brother Mike Downie was a loose, hyperbolic master of ceremonies, promising all of us from the get-go that the historically significant occasion was another step in the urgent process of reconciliation for families destroyed by residential schools like the one 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack died trying to flee in 1966.Ĭhanie’s story was starkly, artfully animated by illustrator Jeff Lemire and director Justin Stephenson. The two families, around 30 strong, stood onstage together, flanked by others Downie had rallied to wake people up and maybe even change them a little bit. GORD DOWNIE’S SECRET PATH at Roy Thomson Hall, Friday, October 21. Rating: NNNNNīy the end of the Secret Path concert, when the Wenjack family were given a chance to speak, they expressed tremendous gratitude to Gord Downie’s family for giving their lost relative, Chanie Wenjack, something close to a new life.
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