Former residential school student remembered through legacy space program

People gathered in Amhertsview, Ont., this week to celebrate the opening of the latest Downie Wenjack Fund legacy space. The fund was started by the family of late Tragically Hip lead singer Gord Downie and is meant to honour the memory and legacy of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old who died of hunger and exposure after fleeing the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora in October 1966. Downie’s brother Mike knew his time was short after contracting an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2015 and wanted to draw greater attention to reconciliation and the tragic stories of former residential school students like Wenjack. “He would have never really talked about the word, like even use the word legacy, he was really not that kind of guy,” Mike Downie said. “His actions were, I think how he spoke. But he knew, I think he knew that this was going to be important and was going to outlive him by a long time, so yeah he would be very proud.” Downie passed away in October 2017. The fund has opened more than 100 legacy spaces across Canada in places such as schools, libraries and hospitals. The one in Amhertsview is located in the W.J. Henderson Recreation Centre, about 20 west of Kingston along Lake Ontario. The room is equipped with books, paintings and information about who Wenjack was and what happened to him. “You know one of the really beautiful things about the legacy space program is that communities can really tailor it to meet their needs to engage community members, local stake holders, Indigenous leadership, elders, knowledge keepers, artists to create these beautiful spaces that create safe welcoming spaces for people to engage in,” Downie Wenjack Fund CEO Sarah Midanik said. “To lean into hard conversations to learn more and to be hopefully inspired and engaged to stay on this path to reconciliation with us.” Mike Downie in front of one of the panels, showing his brother Gord and Wenjack. Photo: Fraser Needham/APTN. The Amhertsview legacy space has a special significance because it is where Downie grew up and played minor hockey as a goalie before the family moved to Kingston in 1980. “He’d be really proud today because this is he took his pee wee hockey team to the all Ontario championships and they won and those games were in this arena,” Mike Downie said. “That’s my little brother, he was a winner.” Local Anishinaabe Elder Judi Montgomery agreed the recreation centre is the right place to put the legacy space. “Because you’re going to have people waiting around for their kids to play hockey and they might just wander in here and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t know that before and I should check these books out of the library. I should learn more about what this issue is,’” she said. “And we’re here to help open people’s eyes.” Vic Linklater, a Cree musician from Moose Factory, Ont., serves as an ambassador for the Downie Wenjack Fund and also fronts a Tragically Hip cover band called The Poets. He said Downie may be gone but his music and commitment to Indigenous issues lives on. “I try to go on that stage as a humble man, a humble Cree man, who lives in the bush in northern Ontario and I get an opportunity to share both the music of the Tragically Hip and the message that Gord really believed with a huge passion to make things right in this country and do something for the Indigenous peoples and with the Indigenous peoples side by side,” Linklater said. Continue Reading