‘Every once in a while, somebody comes along and they change… the direction of a country’

SELKIRK — A local middle school now bears the name of one of its most famous alumni.

École Selkirk Junior High was renamed Murray Sinclair Middle School at a ceremony Wednesday.

The late Sinclair, who was a judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, played basketball for the school team, back when it was known as Selkirk Collegiate Institute.

In 1968, he was named male athlete of the year and voted valedictorian. He would go on to dedicate his career to Indigenous justice and human rights in Canada.

“Every once in a while, somebody comes along and they change the landscape. They change the direction of a country,” Selkirk Mayor Larry Johannson said, referring to Sinclair, who died in November 2024 at the age of 73.

After becoming Manitoba’s first Indigenous judge in 1988, Sinclair co-led the landmark Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, exposing deep systemic racism within the province’s legal system.

He later achieved national prominence as the chief commissioner of the TRC from 2009 to 2015, where he helped bring to light the dark and painful history of the residential school system. The TRC’s final report issued 94 definitive Calls to Action for reconciliation.

Despite all of those accomplishments, his son Niigaan Sinclair, a columnist for the Free Press, said his dad’s high school years meant the most to him, which is why he quietly paid for youth sports equipment and jerseys.

“Our dad loved sports,” said his daughter Dené Sinclair. “He loved supporting young athletes.”

It was in the very gym Sinclair played basketball where his family announced Wednesday that the Murray Sinclair Memorial Fund created a new endowment through the Selkirk Community Foundation. It will fund awards for students at the school who take part in music and sports, two of his lifelong passions.

On Wednesday, the school also unveiled a new logo. Its shield traced from the cover of the 1968 Selkirk Collegiate yearbook. It includes a bird in flight and a sun in reference to Sinclair’s spirit name, “one who speaks of pictures in the sky.”

Long Plain First Nation member Cheryl Wirch, known as “Granny Cheryl” around the school, presented a star blanket with the Ojibwe floral design Sinclair loved.

When Wirch was a young mother, having trouble with Child and Family Services, someone suggested she call Sinclair, then a newly appointed judge.

“I left a voicemail. And sure enough, he called me back from his chambers, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” she recalled. “I’ll never forget one of the things that Murray said to me back then. He said, ‘Be proud of who you are, and never give up. And education is No. 1.’”

Dené said her father’s goal was to be the best Anishinaabe man he could be.

“For him, I know that meant to be kind, to be a good relative, to be a good neighbour,” she said. “It meant that he needed to know who he was.”

Her family hopes the endowment created in Sinclair’s memory will help young people set goals and explore who they are.

The building opened in 1956 as Selkirk Collegiate Institute and was the town’s high school until 1971, when the Lord Selkirk Regional Comprehensive Secondary School opened.

For the next five decades the building served as a junior high for students in grades 7 to 9.

Last September, Grade 9 students moved to the regional high school, and the building became a middle school for all of Selkirk’s grades 6 to 8 students.

Carl Stone, an Indigenous knowledge keeper from Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, who was at Wednesday’s naming ceremony and went to the school with Sinclair, remembers seeing him for the first time in the hallway near the principal’s office, holding an armful of books.

“Whoever thought that’s the guy that the school is going to be named after?” said Stone. “That’s awesome.”

In May, the Louis Riel School Division also named its new school in Sage Creek after Sinclair, using his spirit name Mazina-Giizhik.

kelly.riess@winnipegfreepress.com