Walk for Wenjack
St. Joseph-Scollard Hall Community Takes Steps Toward Reconciliation with Walk for Wenjack
On November 4, 2025, a sea of purple bloomed across the track of Cundari Field at St. Joseph-Scollard Hall Catholic Secondary School (SJSH), as hundreds of students and staff participated in the school’s first Walk for Wenjack, wearing the signature colour of the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund (DWF).
The first Walk for Wenjack took place nearly a decade ago as a grassroots initiative retracing the steps of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy from Ogoki Post who died in 1966 after escaping the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario, while attempting to return to his family more than 600 kilometres away.
Formed by the Wenjack and Downie families, the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund seeks to build cultural understanding and create a path toward reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.
For an hour, as the large group from SJSH walked the track, waving purple DWF flags while songs from The Tragically Hip echoed across the field, they responded to Gord Downie’s call to “Do Something.” Downie first shared this message during his final Tragically Hip concert, encouraging Canadians to take action toward reconciliation.
Bronte McLeod, SJSH student and Indigenous Student Trustee for the Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board, spoke to what the DWF stands for and the significance of engaging in reconciliation as a school community:
“It’s important that we all learn about Canada’s history with Indigenous peoples, specifically Residential Schools. School is an amazing place to learn about this. The most effective way to get nation-wide reconciliation is through action. At SJSH, we not only learned about the history of Residential Schools, but we hosted our Walk for Wenjack as an opportunity for students to act.”
At the time of writing, the SJSH community ranked first on the DWF’s school leaderboard for distance walked, with a combined 1,911.8 kilometres completed, and raised over $500 in support of the Fund.
Through their participation, students and staff of St. Joseph-Scollard Hall—one of over 9,500 DWF Legacy Schools in Canada—affirmed the importance of prioritizing acts of reconciliation. With each step they took, they demonstrated that reconciliation is not an option—it’s a necessity.
