Toronto writer Robert MacBain is a former senior reporter, news director, political strategist, public relations consultant, and author of three books.Parks Canada has designated as “a national historic person” a 12-year-old Ojibway boy whose lifeless body was found lying beside the railway tracks in northwestern Ontario back in October 1966. He joins a list that includes Alexander Graham Bell, Terry Fox, and Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery.However, not only did Parks Canada get the boy’s name wrong in a news release in March 2025, some of its claims about him have no basis in fact.The boy’s name was Charlie Wenjack. That’s what his family always called him. When they show up at special events honoring his memory, they wear blue T-shirts with the name Charlie Wenjack embossed on the front..NEUMANN: Alberta’s democracy needs some sober second thought.His mother’s obituary lists him as Charlie. The marker on his grave at Ogoki Post on the Marten Falls Indian Reserve No. 65 up near James Bay says “CHARLES WENJACK.”In designating him a national historic person, Parks Canada misnamed him “Chanie” Wenjack.There never was a person, historic or otherwise, known as Chanie Wenjack..That’s not all that Parks Canada got wrong.And, yes, this is the same Parks Canada that changed the name of Fort Calgary to “The Confluence” last year despite the fact that it was designated a national historic site in 1925 because that’s where the first troop of the North-West Mounted Police arrived in 1875.In his report on the negotiations leading up to the signing of the Blackfeet Treaty in September 1877, Lieutenant-Governor David Laird said: “The leading Chiefs of the Blackfeet and kindred tribes [Sarcee, Blood, Piegan, Stony], declared publicly at the treaty that, had it not been for the Mounted Police, they would all have been dead ere this time.”.BEST: Judges are remaking Constitutional law, not applying it, and Canadians’ property rights are part of the collateral damage.Fort Calgary became Calgary, just as Fort Edmonton became Edmonton.There never was a Fort Confluence, just as there never was a Chanie Wenjack.The statement Parks Canada released when “Chanie” Wenjack was designated a national historic person says: “His life as a student and his death following his escape [emphasis added] from the institution are representative of the experiences of thousands of children incarcerated [emphasis added] in the Indian residential school system who were driven by loneliness, abuse, and desperation to run away and try to find their way home.”.That statement is flat-out wrong.As I document in my 2023 book, Lonely Death of an Ojibway Boy, there were no prison-like conditions at the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario, from which Charlie or any other indigenous student would have found it necessary to “escape.” The doors were not locked. There was no gate at the entrance. The children were free to come and go as they pleased — outside of class.A significant number of the students who were at the school at the same time as Charlie called the principal and his wife “Dad” and “Mom.” Several signed their letters “Love.” Many thanked them for being such good parents to them while they were living hundreds of kilometres away from their homes and family. .FLETCHER: Trump lays the lumber on BC and Eby’s elbows are up.Former students wrote, saying they received letters from their children saying they enjoyed being at Cecilia Jeffrey and that they, the parents, had also enjoyed the years they’d spent at the school.Students who had left to go to high school in North Bay wrote about how they were adapting to their new surroundings and expressing thanks for how well they had been cared for at Cecilia Jeffrey.Former students who had left because they were needed at home, or for other reasons, like running away, wrote asking if the school would please take them back. Others said they wanted to come for a visit and renew acquaintances with the staff and friends they had made while they were at the school..There isn’t so much as a hint in the more than 300 letters from students and parents that I have read about any child being emotionally, physically, or sexually abused by any member of the staff at Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School.Again, Parks Canada got it all wrong.Here’s what actually happened to the real Charlie Wenjack. On the bright Sunday afternoon of October 16, 1966, Charlie tagged along with two orphaned brothers who decided, on the spur of the moment, to visit their uncle who had a cabin about 30 kilometres away..STEPHAN: Ending the strike and resuming school is good for Alberta.Four days later, the Ojibway trapper turned Charlie loose at the railway tracks with no food, water, or money and told him to ask railway workers for food along the way.The 12-year-old boy didn’t have the foggiest idea where his home was. All he knew was that it had taken him about an hour on a plane and ten hours on a train to get to the school during the three years that he was there.Charlie only made it about 20 kilometres east on the railway tracks through snow squalls and freezing rain, wearing a light cotton windbreaker, before fainting and falling on his back. His stomach was empty. Bruises on his shins, forehead, and over his left eye showed that he must have fallen several times..Three days before Charlie’s body was found, the trapper’s wife told the indigenous principal of the school she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Charlie or her nephews.In fact, they’d been with her for three days and Charlie was safe and sound at a trapline about five kilometres away.A coroner’s jury later ruled that the trapper should have called the school or notified the police that Charlie had been at his cabin for four days..MORGAN: Bring on right-to-work legislation.Parks Canada got that part wrong, too. Its statement said Charlie left the cabin on Wednesday, October 19, 1966, two days before the trapper turned him loose.As the Fort Calgary and “Chanie” Wenjack fiascos show, Parks Canada is in dire need of a fact checker.Toronto writer Robert MacBain is a former senior reporter, news director, political strategist, public relations consultant, and author of three books.www.RobertMacBainBooks.ca
