The emotional strength that Patrick and Mike have shown is inspiring, but they add that they're driven to keep their brother's legacy alive with projects like Finding the Secret Path because of what it means to others. It's not easy and, what can you say, there's a lot of pain without really going back and digging it up." "You know, I feel enough pain without having to go back and see some of the images, or hear the music and things like that. I see stuff and I …," Patrick says, taking a moment to collect himself before continuing his thought. To get in there in the way Gord would, just to kind of work your way through it and stay active," Patrick explains when asked how difficult it's been to see all those moments with Gord again in the documentary. "In many ways, Mike is in the trenches, and I think that's really helped him cope with the pain. Making the documentary has been a welcome distraction for Mike, and a painful reminder for Patrick. Now that he's gone, "letting go" is something that Gord Downie's brothers are also struggling with. He clearly was so taken with it and couldn't let it go." When you hear the songs, clearly it was affecting him. "For Gord, his way of experiencing the world is to write about it. "I think he really tried to put himself in those shoes and imagine what that was like," Mike says. Written entirely in the first person, Downie tried to feel what Chanie Wenjack was feeling on his journey from moment he was taken away from his family, to his lonely death. The Secret Path began as 10 poems that Gord Downie wrote as he grappled with Chanie's story. Mike says it was partly out of a sense of guilt, partly out of shame, but mainly because, like him, there were so many people in Canada that didn't know the dark history of residential schools. The more you dig, the more you get into it, the more awful it becomes and you start to realize what was going on for so many kids."Īs soon as Mike told his brother about Chanie's story, he says Gord was transfixed and made it his purpose to bring it to Canadians. "It certainly took ahold of Gord, I think, because it's just so simple - a boy trying to get home. "It's such a simple story, that's part of its grasp," says Mike. The hour-long film chronicles that last year of Gord Downie's life, and his determination to tell Chanie Wenjack's story: Now, nearly a year after Gord Downie's death, his brothers Patrick and Mike are premiering a new CBC documentary they've produced - Finding The Secret Path.Īn encore broadcast of the documentary will air on CBC News Network on Oct. The Secret Path and getting it out there. "This is not to take away from anything he did on that farewell tour with the Hip, but this is what he really wanted to see to the end. "His main focus was the release of Secret Path," says Gord's brother, Patrick Downie. It's a story that gripped Downie, even as he struggled with the brain tumour that was killing him. He died of hunger and exhaustion trying to walk 600 kilometres home to the family he was taken from. In his last year, while living with his own tragic story, Gord Downie was consumed by another.Ĭhanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy, ran away from a residential school in northern Ontario 52 years ago.
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