Students take part in Walk For Wenjack on Rail Trail

Oct 17, 2023 | 5:00 AM

Walk for Wenjack begins today on the first ten kilometres of the Okanagan Rail Trail.

School District 22 classes and community members will be able to walk from the Zero marker in Coldstream to Kekuli Bay to learn about Chanie Wenjack’s story as they walk about a fifth of the distance that Chanie walked as he tried to escape from the Indian residential school and to find his home 600 km’s away.

In 1966, Chanie Wenjack ran away from Cecilia Jeffrey Residential School in Kenora, Ontario. He walked for 36 hours along the train tracks before dying of exposure on October 22. He was just 12 years old.

Chanie’s death sparked the first inquest into the treatment of Indigenous children in the residential school system.

A walk in his honour was organized by volunteers in 2016. The first walk retraced Chanie’s steps, starting at the residential school and continuing to his final resting spot near Farlane, ON.

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The walk has since become part of Secret Path Week, a national movement commemorating the legacies of Chanie Wenjack and Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip. October 17 and 22 respectively mark the dates that Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack “joined the spirit world.”

There will be informational and interactive signs placed at each mile marker along the Rail Trail from Oct. 17-22.

Each sign has a picture from Secret Path with a QR code that goes to the YouTube song associated with the picture.

There are also signs about Chanie Wenjack and Indian residential schools. One of the signs has a list of names of students who never made it home from the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

“Everybody has their own reason to Walk for Wenjack. For some, it may be a moment to honour Chanie. For others, it may be way to raise awareness of the true history of residential schools,” the website for the Downie-Wenjack fund stated.