Antica Productions

The Secret Path is an animated film adaptation of Gord Downie's album and Jeff Lemire's graphic novel. Working with Downie's poetry and music, Lemire has created a powerful visual representation of the life of Chanie Wenjack.

Between 2000 and 2011, seven First Nations high school students in Thunder Bay died. Five were found in rivers surrounding Lake Superior. All were forced to leave their homes in order to attend school. Anishinaabe/Polish Canadian journalist Tanya Talaga brought international attention to this tragedy through her award-winning non-fiction book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City. Talaga returns to Thunder Bay and her ancestral roots to talk with the family members, Indigenous community leaders and youth whose resilience in the face of unjust colonial systems provide a path forward.

"Secret Path” is the award winning multi-media project that seamlessly blends Gord Downie's poetry and music with Jeff Lemire's graphic novel. It tells the wrenching and all too common story of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old boy who died in 1966 after running away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario. Finding the Secret Path is an intimate concert film and documentary that captures Gord Downie, behind the scenes, as he prepares for an emotional and historic Secret Path performance, before the entire Wenjack family, at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, interwoven with footage from the original animated film.