chanie wenjack death

In 2016, Historica Canada released a Heritage Minute about the heart-breaking story of 12-year old Chanie “Charlie” Wenjack, whose death sparked the first inquest into the treatment of Indigenous children in Canadian residential schools. Chanie Wenjack was not attending an Indian residential school at the time of his death and Cecilia Jeffrey was not operated by the Catholic Church. Silence. He died while trying to walk 600 km back home. Published in October 2016, a novella by Canadian author Joseph Boyden focused on the suffering Wenjack endured and his state of mind during his ordeal. Chanie’s story sparked national conversation about the standards and practices of Residential Schools. Nobody will know whether Charlie changed his mind about leaving or whether he wanted to see his friends one last time, but instead of striking out east along the railroad tracks, he walked north to Mud Lake, arriving at the cabin by the trapline before Kelly and his nephews got there in the canoe. Elwood contacted the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) who recovered the body an hour later with help from a CN section crew. It is the exact spot where on the night of October 22 Charlie collapsed and died from exposure and hunger . An hour later a section crew and two police officers went out to bring Charlie’s body back. And Charlie, who understood hardly any English, spent the first two years in grade one. Kelly cooked and divided them among the four boys. No, they didn’t understand why they had to be at the school. The lonely death of Chanie Wenjack – Macleans. The haunting lyrics sung in a deep voice that reminded me of my friend, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, stayed with me, and to this day, 30 some years later, I can still hear the song in my head. It is unlikely that Charlie ever understood why he had to go to school and why it had to be such a long way from home. by ahnationtalk on September 20, 2016 2095 Views. He died while trying to walk 600 km back home. Chanie Wenjack was a young Anishinaabe boy from Ogoki Post in Marten Falls In Northern Ontario, Canada. For more information about Chanie Wenjack visit The Canadian Encyclopedia. Chanie attended the school for two years and ran away on Oct 16, 1966. Is it right?”. Would they run away again? The kid behind the counter suddenly turned whitefaced and angry, “No, we did,” he said. In 1967, a Maclean’s cover story told the tragic tale of Chanie Wenjack, an Indigenous boy who died after running away from his residential school in northern Ontario. If they had planned it a little better they could have taken along their parkas and overshoes. Topic. Chanie Wenjack, an Anishinaabe boy from Ontario, ran away from his residential school near Kenora at age 12, and subsequently died from hunger and exposure to the harsh weather. He had played hooky for one afternoon a week earlier, and for that he had been spanked by the principal, Colin Wasacase. His article, “The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack,” was published in Maclean’s magazine in 1967. The three boys stayed with Ralph and Jackie's uncle, Charley Kelly, in Redditt. Chanie was born January 19, 1954. It was late at night when the three boys got to Redditt: it had taken them more than eight hours. The book follows Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Ojibweboy, as he escapes from a Northern Ontarioresidential schoolin the futile hopes of returning home to his family and two dogs. “Chanie” was what his family called him.) He probably spent hours, huddled behind rocks to escape the wind, gazing at the railroad tracks. At Sioux Lookout the little party picked up Charlie’s mother. No, it was the higher-ups, the government,” replied the man. But Charlie didn’t ask anyone for anything. Because Charlie wasn’t as strong as the others, they had to wait often while he rested and regained his strength. His ordeal and his death brought attention to the treatment of children in the Canadian Indian Residential School System and following Wenjack's death, an inquest into the matter was ordered by the Government of Canada. just four-and-a-half feet from the trains that carry the white world by in warm and well-fed comfort. I never seen a kid before who was so quiet like that.”, Nobody told Charlie to go. Secret Path Week is a national week to remember the death of Chanie Wenjack, a young Anishinaabe boy who died trying to run away from residential school and reunite with his parents. In fact, he was thin and sickly. None of the half-dozen whites sitting at the counter even looked at her. He buried Charlie, his only son, in the tiny cemetery on the north shore of the Albany River. All Chanie wanted was to go home, which was over 600 km away in Ogoki Post on the Marten Falls First Nation reserve. Consequently, Cecilia Jeffrey is, for 10 months in the year, really nothing more than an enormous dormitory. I didn’t know what to do. Boyden's superb text is accompanied by outstanding illustrations. The Sunday they went to pick up Charlie’s body, intermittent snow and sleet blew through Kenora’s streets. In their own way they tried to do their duty. We made them that way.”, The men at the counter looked at him with closed, sullen faces. That the music was about the death of Chanie Wenjack was no surprise to some in the audience. “Do you think it was because he wanted to see his parents?”, Before the boys were questioned, the constable in charge of the investigation, Gerald Lucas, had given the jury a matter-of-fact account of finding Charlie’s body. .I guess I’ll have to learn to keep my mouth shut. In one of the photographs an Ontario Provincial Police sergeant is pointing down at Charlie’s body, where it lies beside the CNR track. Chanie Wenjack was a young Anishinaabe boy from Ogoki Post in Marten Falls In Northern Ontario, Canada. . In 2016, Historica Canada released a Heritage Minute about the heart-breaking story of 12-year old Chanie “Charlie” Wenjack, whose death sparked the first inquest into the treatment of Indigenous children in Canadian residential schools. Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) First Nations boy who ran away from Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School where he boarded for three years while attending residential school in Kenora, Ontario, Canada. Evidence given at the inquest into his death showed that he had made his way another 20 km (12 mi) east along the CN mainline. Ralph, 13, was always running away —three times since school had started last fall. The frontman of the Tragically Hip worked with Toronto illustrator Jeff Lemire on Secret Path, which includes an album, graphic novel and animated film. He collapsed and died sometime on the morning of October 23 in a rock cut near Farlane. On the afternoon of Sunday, October 16, when Charlie had only another week to live, he was playing on the Cecilia Jeffrey grounds with his two friends, Ralph and Jackie MacDonald. Click here to view this article in the Maclean’s archive. Because nothing ever really changes around here.”. IAN ADAMS February 1 1967 There is no evidence that he or any child who lived there suffered physical or sexual abuse at the hands of anyone. They were all dry. Wenjack had only a light windbreaker and walked for 36 hours in the wind as the temperature dropped to −6 °C (21 °F). A young well-dressed Indian girl came in and, with a masklike face, walked around the woman on the floor. When Eddie Cameron, Charlie’s best friend, entered the witness box, Davidson unnerved Eddie with warnings about telling the truth and swearing on the Bible. The Wenjack affair along with many other incidents would bring legislative reforms and class action lawsuits as well as the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Charlie wasn’t a strong boy. So it must have been with a defiant attempt to assert his own trail existence that he would take out his map and show it to his friend Eddie Cameron, and together they would try to make sense out of it. Chanie Wenjack died 50 years ago this month: The Ojibwa boy froze by the side of Northern Ontario train tracks after running away from a residential school. The village he came from, Ogoki Post on the Martin Falls reservation, didn’t have a day school. … We have republished that cover story below in its original form, in which Chanie’s teachers misnamed him Charlie. Chanie attended the school for two years and ran away on Oct 16, 1966. As soon as they were clear of the school, the three boys hit that strange running walk with which young Indian boys can cover 10 miles in an hour. Early the next morning the boys walked another half mile to the cabin of Charles Kells. … All were caught within 24 hours.). It started at the Cecillia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, ON, and continued to Redditt, ON for a ceremony representing Chanie's final resting spot near Farlane, ON. “The thing we remember most about him was his sense of humor. Anong Beam. It was on the last part of this walk, probably by the tracks, that Charlie picked up a CNR schedule with a route map in it. “We tell this man he has to send his son to one of our schools, then we bring his boy back on a luggage car.”. “I work for the highways department . When the lights went down, the darkness felt overwhelming. [5], On June 21, 2016, a Heritage Minute about Wenjack's death was released by Historica Canada to coincide with National Aboriginal Day. Chanie Wenjack, 12, died from exposure and hunger. 156087739, citing Ogoki Cemetery, Ogoki, Cochrane District, Ontario, Canada ; Maintained by … Fifty years ago this month, 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack ran away from a residential school. Today the story of Wenjack has been seen as a symbol of resistance against the residential school system. He was walking alone along a railway track, trying to make his way home to his father 600 kilometres away in northern Ontario. His own parents kept him out of school for two years because another boy in the family died much the same way Charlie did. The coroner, Dr. R. G. Davidson, a thin-lipped and testy man, mumbled his own evidence when he read the pathologist’s report, then kept telling the boys who ran away with Charlie to speak up when answering the Crown attorney’s questions. Chanie "Charlie" Wenjack (January 19, 1954 – October 23, 1966) was an Ojibwe boy who was famous for running away from a residential school. Travelling on foot in an attempt to make the 1,000-kilometre journey home to Ogoki Post, his body was found on October 23 along railroad tracks It was a show in which a dying man acted out the dying moments of a child who froze to death, alone. It’s the only way you can get to Charlie’s home. He didn’t eat anything himself but he drank some tea with the others. Ojibwe artist and curator from M'Chigeeng First Nation, Ontario. I told him to ask the sectionmen along the way for some food.”. It started at the Cecillia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, ON, and continued to Redditt, ON for a ceremony representing Chanie's final resting spot near Farlane, ON. Today marks the 54th anniversary of the tragic death of Chanie Wenjack, an Anishinaabe boy, who at the tender age of 12, ran away from Cecilia Jeffrey Residential School run by The Presbyterian Church in Canada to return home, only to be found … The two boys Chanie was with, brothers, made their way to their uncle’s home but Chanie continued on alone. He attended Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario. [1][2], Chanie Wenjack was born in 1954 on the Ogoki Post on the Marten Falls Reserve. The 84th Heritage Minute in Historica Canada's collection. It was one week after he escaped from the residential school and over 60km from where he started. The first Walk for Wenjack took place in 2016 and retraced the steps of Chanie Wenjack. Burton was gentle enough, but the boys were withdrawn and for the most part monosyllabic in their answers. That might have saved Charlie’s life. Colin Wasacase, the principal, went along with them, too. “No,” insisted the kid, “it was you, me, and everybody else. Yes, they were lonesome. After four days with the Kellys, Wenjack left to follow the Canadian National Railway (CN) mainline, heading towards Ogoki Post, 600 km (370 mi) east and north from Kenora. Chanie had frozen to death. “It’s a story that should be told,” said the section foreman, Ed Beaudry. Two years after his death, Gord Downie’s memorable concert performance of his Secret Path album, was recreated by performers in Toronto Saturday night. That means he was a slow learner and had to be given special instruction in English and arithmetic. The project began as ten poems written by Gord as he imagined what it would be like to be Chanie. This fall he wasn’t quite good enough to go back into the grade system, so he was placed in what is called a senior opportunity class. They went to the house of a white man the MacDonald brothers knew as “Mister Benson.” Benson took the exhausted boys in, gave them something to eat, and let them sleep that night on the floor. In the following days of loneliness that map was to become the focus of his longings to get back to his father. He died as the white world's rules had forced him to live—cut off from his people. Fifty years after Chanie Wenjack's tragic death while running away from residential school, his sister says it's time every First Nation had its own school. No, they didn’t understand why they couldn’t be with their relatives. Chanie “Charlie” Wenjack was an Anishinaabe boy and only 12 years old when he ran away from Cecilia Jeffrey Residential School, located near Kenora, Ontario. “We? It was a terrible mistake.”. The school was funded by the Canadian government and overseen by the Women’s Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church. 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