MacBAIN: American-funded anti-oil sands group exploited Ojibway boy’s death

Note to readers: In his February 21, 2024, opinion piece in The Western Standard Robert MacBain mistakenly said that the Tides Canada Foundation was reported to have provided the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund with more than $2 million during the fund’s first years of operation. Mr. MacBain has since learned that the actual amount, according to the Tides Canada financial reports, was $499,997. Given that the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack started out as a project of Tides Canada, Mr. MacBain assumed that most of the entire $2,781,574 the DWF received from “other charities” during its first three years of operation according to its filings with the Canada Revenue Agency, came from Tides Canada.Mr. MacBain regrets having made that mistaken assumption. 26 Feb 2024.An American-funded organization dedicated to shutting down Alberta’s oil sands production gave a Canadian indigenous advocacy group just under $500,000 during its first years of operation.On July 11 2017, Tides Canada Foundation posted an item on its website that said: “Meet the Downie Wenjack Fund, one of our newest projects on the shared platform. Mike and Gord Downie, alongside the Wenjack Family, launched the Fund to continue the conversation that began with Chanie Wenjack’s residential school story.”When Halifax Regional Council decided to have a Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund (DWF) “Legacy Room” in a boardroom at city hall in December 2017, the $25,000 cheque was made out to the Tides Canada Foundation.According to the DWF, it didn’t receive official charitable status until March, 2018.A statement on its website said: “In March of 2018, the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund received its official status as a charitable organization. Prior to this we operated as a project of Tides Canada." (Emphasis added.)In an article published in the Financial Post on March 21 2018, former BC Attorney General/Justice Minister Suzanne Anton said: “The US-based Tides Foundation, for example, directs funds to Canadian organizations such as Dogwood Initiative and Leadnow, both of whom featured prominently in the anti-pipeline protest on March 10 in Burnaby and both of whom take an active role in BC elections, aiming to get pro-energy politicians out of office and anti-pipeline politicians elected.“Over the last few years Tides has granted $40 million to 100 Canadian anti-pipeline organizations who, in return, have done a fine job of constraining the Canadian economy and saving money for American buyers of Canadian oil.”In an article published in the Financial Post on October 14 2010, Vancouver-based writer/researcher Vivian Krause reported the California-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation gave at least US$70 million to Tides Canada which, in turn, funded indigenous anti-pipeline groups in BC.It would appear that $499,997 Tides Canada provided to the DWF was part of its efforts to undermine investor confidence and landlock Alberta oil sands.The tragic death of a 12-year-old Ojibway boy was being used to create further division between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians and strip away support for Alberta oil.An anti-Catholic DWF book titled Secret Path — a project of the late Gord Downie, lead singer for The Tragically Hip rock band — is being used in more than 65,000 classrooms across Canada and in parts of the United States.The book turned a Protestant Indian residential school in Kenora, Ontario, where children said they felt loved and cared for, into a Catholic horror chamber complete with a pedophile priest.Children reading Secret Path see a drawing of nuns in habits delousing an emaciated-looking Charlie (a.k.a. “Chanie”) Wenjack and four other naked Ojibway boys who are covering their genitals with their hands. A young boy dressed only in pyjama bottoms in the school dormitory yells in pain as a nun with a big cross hanging from her neck yanks his ear.A priest chases a young girl across the playground, grabs her by the arm and heads for one of the school doors as Charlie and his friends look on.Charlie looks up in terror as a priest approaches his bed in the dormitory. There’s a close-up of the priest’s crotch.As I document in my latest book, Lonely Death of an Ojibway Boy, all of that is patently false.There were no nuns or priests at Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School. The school was operated by the Women’s Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. None of the staff wore clerical garb.The text on the back cover of Secret Path says 12-year-old Charlie died “trying to escape (emphasis added) the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School.”There were no prison-like conditions from which Charlie or any of the 149 other indigenous children would have found it necessary to escape.They were all free to come and go as they pleased, outside of class. The doors were not locked.Contrary to the claims in the widely-disseminated DWF book about Charlie having “escaped” from the school, the fact is that he tagged along with two friends who wanted to visit their uncle on the bright Sunday afternoon of October 16 1966. He stayed with the uncle and his family for four days before the uncle irresponsibly turned him loose at the railway tracks with no food or water and without the foggiest idea of where he was going.Charlie died about a day later as a result of exposure to wet and cold. His lifeless body was found lying beside the railway tracks just east of Kenora on Sunday, October 23 1966.Despite the fact that its premier offering, Secret Path, is a total fabrication, DWF has done remarkably well financially,In 2018, the Liberal government gave DWF $5 million to, among other things, disseminate even more misinformation in classrooms across Canada.According to its 2022/2023 annual report, it had revenues of $3,852,506 — down from $5,448,673 in 2021/2022 — and net assets of more than $13 million.A report prepared by Charity Intelligence Canada said that less than $135,000 of DWF’s revenue in 2022 came from government sources. The rest came from individual and corporate donors, including banks, major retailers, universities, performing arts centres and others.It’s highly unlikely that any of DWF’s individual and corporate donors are aware of the fact that the fund’s very reason for being is based on a false account of the short life and tragic death of 12-year-old Charlie Wenjack.Nor would they know that their donations support the ongoing operation of an organization that would appear to have started out as part of Tides Canada’s multi-million dollar campaign against Alberta’s oil sands projects.Someone should draw their attention to the truth — about Charlie (a.k.a. “Chanie”) Wenjack and the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund.Toronto author Robert MacBain has been following the indigenous file for more than 60 years, as a newspaper reporter, consultant to the Department of Indian Affairs and the author of three books with Indigenous themes.

MacBAIN: American-funded anti-oil sands group exploited Ojibway boy’s death

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