Blue Rodeo’s Michael Boguski and friends release song for Secret Path Week
Michael Boguski of Blue Rodeo is joining this year’s Secret Path Week efforts to help move Canadians toward healing and reconciliation.
Along with Chris Mason and Lucas Goetz (formerly of Deep Dark Woods), Jim Bowskill (The Sheepdogs, Blue Rodeo), Chris Sleightholm and Dustin Bentall, the group goes by the name the Cold Manitoba Project and has released three songs with the proceeds going to the Native Addictions Council of Manitoba. So far, $42,000 has been raised through the release of previous songs.
Today the group is releasing a new song, the final installment called Land & Tide. The song is available on YouTube today and will be on all streaming platforms starting Friday.
“Spearheaded by Boguski, the collective of like-minded creatives was moved by Gord Downie’s call for all Canadians to do whatever we can to help move towards healing and reconciliation through awareness, education and action, and began the search for a grassroots charity to support and a creative way to do so,” the group says in a press release.
The organization they’ve chosen, the Native Addictions Council of Manitoba, is a First Nations-owned and operated treatment centre focused solely on addiction issues facing First Nations people in Manitoba and the surrounding areas.
“Everyone in the band felt this was the strongest tune of the three tunes that we recorded,” Boguski says. “For me, the line in the chorus, ‘I can see the turning tide’ really hits home given the current social climate with which we find ourselves in. Reconciliation and ‘doing the right thing’ are no longer choices. They are absolute necessities if we hope to move forward and create real change for the next generation.”
The group’s overall goal is simple: “To move people toward healing — healing as individuals and as communities — and to help bring more awareness to unifying issues, such as substance abuse and mental health, and to think of ways to reconcile and move towards peace and togetherness.”
And it all comes back to Gord Downie and his urge for Candians to “do something.”
“Gord’s message was simple — do what you can,” Boguski says.
