Chanie Wenjack’s short life has become an iconic symbol of the residential school era in Canada.
The mother of Chanie Wenjack, the 12-year-old boy who froze to death while on the run from a residential school and who later inspired a generation of Canadians to learn about this devastating chapter in Canada’s history, has died.
Mrs. Agnes Wenjack passed away in a Geraldton, Ontario hospital on September 1. A mother, a great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, the matriarch of the Ogoki Post, Marten Falls First Nations family was 89-years-old.
Her son, Chanie, was found dead by Canadian National Railway workers on October 23, 1966, after he ran away from Cecilia Jeffrey Residential School. He was trying to walk home – a nearly 1,000 km journey.
His death might have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for a 1967 Maclean’s magazine article, “The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack,” that movingly catalogued the tragic last movements of the boy’s life. An inquest was held into Chanie’s death but the family was not told about it. They didn’t have a chance to participate and they did not learn any details about how he died until they read it in the Maclean’s article.
Fifty years after Chanie’s death, his life has become an iconic symbol of the residential school era in Canada and the inspiration behind musician Gord Downie and documentary film maker Mike Downie’s, Secret Path initiative.
Across Canada there were 139 church run, federally funded residential schools operating from the mid-19th century until the 1990s. In Ontario there were seventeen, fifteen in northern Ontario and only two in the south. The schools were intended to assimilate Indigenous kids into Canadian society by taking them away from their families, their language and culture. About 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children attended residential school and it is estimated 6,000 died while there.
Cecilia Jeffrey, which changed Chanie’s first name to Charlie, was operational until 1974.
Marten Falls is a community within Nishnawabe Aski Nation, a political organization of 49 northern Ontario First Nations. Mrs. Wenjack was the matriarch of the Wenjack family, she loved to hunt, camp and fish. She was also a survivor of the residential school system, noted NAN Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler.
“Like many families whose children were lost to the Indian residential school system, Agnes waited a lifetime for an explanation of why her son’s brief life had to end the way it did,” Fiddler said in a statement.
“She never received an answer, but we pray that she found some comfort having lived to see Chanie’s story immortalized as a catalyst for reconciliation, and a lasting tribute to all Residential School students who never made it home.”
Co-creator of the Secret Path multimedia project, Mike Downie, expressed his condolences at Mrs. Wenjack’s death. The Downie family, brothers Gord and Pat, have worked with the Wenjack’s to create the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack FundGord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund to teach Canadians about residential schools.
“May her strength, love and devotion help guide and comfort you on your life’s long journey,” he said.
Mrs. Wenjack leaves behind her surviving daughters, Pearl Achneepineskum, Daisy Munroe, Evelyn Baxter and Annie Wenjack and many, many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She is pre-deceased by her husband, Jim Wenjack. A funeral will be held in Geraldton on Wednesday.
