A national network of gathering places in commercial and institutional buildings figures in Canada’s reconciliation toolbox this September 30 and throughout the year. Legacy Spaces, a program of the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, now encompasses more than 125 landlords, corporate tenants and public entities that have committed room within their facilities for an exchange of knowledge about the experience and repercussions of residential schools.
“The legacy space is typically in a lobby or a public-facing space, and that’s where reconciliation is meant to be discussed,” Mike Downie, a founding member of the charitable fund’s board of directors, told delegates to the Building Owners & Managers Association (BOMA) of Canada’s 2026 national conference. “Our partners are right across the country. I’m sure we have legacy spaces in some of your buildings.”
Downie, a documentary filmmaker and brother of the iconic musician and poet, the late Gord Downie, delivered the opening keynote address at the annual BOMEX event, which was held in Ottawa last week. Speaking one week ahead of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, he championed the motivating force of storytelling, and its ability to inspire productive connections and actions as people learn about others’ experiences, adversities, strengths and successes.
The genesis of the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund is one such example. A 2012 radio news report on testimony at the then in-progress Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada prompted the Downie brothers to explore further — first leading Mike Downie to a 1967 feature story in Maclean’s magazine entitled, The lonely death of Chanie Wenjack — and to a shared ambition to spread the message more widely. That was in a not-so-distant past when non-Indigenous Canadians typically had little awareness of the history of the residential school system.
“Gord had been touring the country for 25 years, meeting people all the time, hearing a lot of stories, writing down some of those stories, and I’d been making documentaries, at that point, for 16 or 17 years, going all over the country and interviewing people. And between the two of us, we didn’t know a single story about a child in a residential school,” Downie recalled. “I think we just did the math and concluded there must be millions of other non-Indigenous Canadians that had never heard a story like that.”
This October marks the 10th anniversary of the release of The Secret Path, a multimedia package of an album, graphic novel and animated film based on the 10 poems/songs that Gord Downie wrote about 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack’s life in and runaway journey from a residential school in Kenora, Ontario. His body was found by the CN rail tracks on Oct. 23, 1966, about three days and less than 20 kilometres into a roughly 640-kilometre attempted trek to his home in Ogoki Post in remote northwestern Ontario.
“It starts with the story of a little boy trying to go home. That’s what stories do — open our eyes and our minds and then our hearts,” Mike Downie asserted. “That opens the door to understanding what we have, what we have to deal with and how we all can find a way to move forward.”
Today, the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund supports the work of reconciliation throughout Canada. It sponsors a resource program that now provides learning materials for more than 7,500 schools, which includes opportunities for schools to host interactive sessions with Indigenous elders and artists. It continues to welcome new participants in the Legacy Spaces program and it serves as the administrator for Oshki Wupoowane/The Blanket Fund, a grant program drawing on revenues from the sale of Hudson’s’Bay blankets.
“This year we’re going to give out $2 million to Indigenous organizations across the country,” Downie reported.
GWL Realty Advisors, Fengate Asset Management and Northcrest Developments currently provide Legacy Spaces. Notable contractors, major corporate tenants and/or real estate investors also participate — including, EllisDon, Manulife, Sun Life, BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank, CPP Investments, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and University Pension Plan Ontario — along with a range of entities in post-secondary institutions, health care facilities, performing arts venues and local government buildings.
As well, BOMA Canada is again encouraging owners/managers to light up and/or adorn their buildings with the colour orange in honour of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Sept. 30.
