WEYBURN – About 900 students from Grades 7 to 12 did a long walk around the Weyburn Comprehensive School as they took part in the “Walk for Wenjack” on Wednesday morning.
The event retraces the steps of Chanie Wenjack, who had been taken 600 km away from his family to attend the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ont., in 1963.
He ran away from the school, along with nine others, at the age of 12 to go back to his family in Ogoki Post, Ont.
The other students were found and returned to the school, but Wenjack’s body was found a week later lying by railway tracks, as he succumbed to exposure and starvation.
The “Walk for Wenjack” was established in 2016 as part of Secret Path Week, to raise money for the Gord Downie-Chanie Wenjack Fund, which helps to build cultural understanding and create a path towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Downie, the late lead singer of the Tragically Hip, had created an album about Wenjack’s story, along with a book and an animated film.
The walk by WCS students took them down King Street, Second Avenue, around the running track and then back up to the school.
