[Chris Tanz]

"I know she did not mean to hurt my feelings, but that's just what she did."

Why? Why did she hurt his feelings by giving him seven matches in a jar and telling him he couldn't go out into the woods without them?

She reminds him of his mother?
He was about to go into the woods without matches, and she made him feel unprepared?
She let him go?

I can't wrap my head around this lyric. Am I missing something obvious?

Ct

[carebread]

I've always been under the impression that it was because he felt unwelcome at that house, and wouldn't allow him to stay with the other 2 boys. Wasn't he basically shunned and referred to as "the stranger" there?

[senrab]

I think this is referring to the bind the couple was in - if the authorities found them hiding Chanie, they may have been arrested or fined (I *believe* that's what I read in the Maclean's article or another article related to the inquest after Chanie's death). So they "didn't mean to hurt his feelings" by kicking him out (they were probably sympathetic to Chanie's plight and why he wanted to go home to his family)...but of course they ultimately did hurt his feelings because they completely abandoned him.

[Chris Tanz]

Follow up question. Why does the countdown go: 6-5; 5-4; 3-2?

[Dark Canuck17]

He is using up matches along his trip to stay warm...I am not Gord obviously but that's what he means right?

[senrab]

Follow up question. Why does the countdown go: 6-5; 5-4; 3-2?

made me think of:

it's our 3rd time in New York
it's your 4th time in New York
we were 5th and 6th on the bill.

[Chris Tanz]

He is using up matches along his trip to stay warm...I am not Gord obviously but that's what he means right?

I meant the specific countdown is weirdly structured and I wonder if there is a reason. The song is called seven matches, but the countdown starts at 6. He counts down from 6 to 5 in the first verse, but then is back to 5 in the second verse (5-4). However, the third verse doesn't follow that pattern and start again at 4, but rather starts at 3 (3-2). We never get to 1 or 0, but maybe that is on purpose to not extinguish all hope.

ct

[sean.bonner]

Also, wasting a match is very easy indoors, let alone out in elements.

[Moosehead]

Zero occurs later on, after that song. In the movie it shows the last fire going out and empty jar being left behind (during the track The Secret Path)

I noticed the countdown the first time I heard it and remember thinking 'ahhh.. this isn't so formulaic as '99 bottles of beer on the wall'

[potsie]

I wonder where the number of matches being "seven" was derived from. In the original 1967 article on Chanie, Ian Adams writes, "When they found Charlie, he didn't have any identification. All they got out of his pockets was a glass jar with a screw top. Inside were half a dozen wooden matches. They were all dry. And that's all he had." Seems likely that he would have tried to use some along the way to start a fire to keep warm and thus probably started with more than seven. However, in reality Charlie's countdown never truly reached zero.

Gord has either taken artistic license with this aspect of the tale in order to flesh out Chanie's story or he undertook further research which led him to the number seven. Interestingly Joseph Boyden's next book is entitled Seven Matches. I read that he and Gord originally considered collaborating on a project but that they "ultimately ended up going into our own creative corners to work individually, keeping each other abreast of what we were doing" (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-chanie-wenjack-chose-joseph-boyden/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how- ... ph-boyden/</a><!-- m -->).