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Journalism students across Canada are learning to share stories that are rooted in reciprocity with Indigenous communities in new ways.

Created by Indigenous faculty and designed in partnership with local communities, students in journalism programs at Carleton University, the University of King’s College and others are taking experiential learning courses that involve spending time with Indigenous people and reporting stories that are important to them.

At Carleton, the Reporting in Indigenous Communities course, created by Anishinaabe journalist and professor Duncan McCue, was offered for the first time in winter 2024. While new to Carleton, McCue is building on his work at the University of British Columbia, where he launched his course in 2011 in collaboration with the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation, the Tsawwassen First Nation, the Squamish First Nation, and others. The goal was to teach students about the unique cultures that are thriving in each First Nation today, and how to respect and prioritize them in their reporting.

In McCue’s course at Carleton, students worked with the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation, the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne, and the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, learning about the stories that matter most to these communities. The theme for stories this year was Adaawe: Stories of Indigenous Economy, with students learning about the spirit of Indigenous entrepreneurship and business innovation.

McCue says the course was also an opportunity for students to learn more about the diversity within and between First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities. “Indigenous people are not homogenous…A Dene is not a Cree is not a Mi’kmaw, and they certainly have very different lived experiences if they grew up in the city versus growing up on the reserve versus growing up in a hamlet. It’s really important for students to understand that.”

At King’s, the Reporting in Mi’kma’ki course, co-created and taught by Miʹkmaw professor Trina Roache, introduces journalism students to the depth and diversity within local Miʹkmaq communities. Miʹkma’ki is the ancestral and unceded land of the Mi’kmaq, colonially known as most of Atlantic Canada and parts of Quebec.

Launched in 2021, the course aims to encourage students to go from reporting stories about the trauma experienced by Mi’kmaq communities to sharing stories that reflect their resilience instead. “Stories are a way of building that relationship and focusing on things that the community wants to celebrate and wants to put out there about how they see themselves,” Roache says of this approach. “It doesn’t mean you don’t do other stories. But you have to do all the stories—you can’t just do the negative ones.”

McCue says these courses are especially important for non-Indigenous students, who continue to be a majority within both programs. “I think it’s important that non-Indigenous journalism students learn and have a baseline of cultural competency when it comes to reporting in Indigenous communities [because] if you are a journalist in Canada, you are going to, at some point in your career, be reporting on Indigenous issues,” McCue says. “I think it is important that non-Indigenous students are exposed to this in a safe setting of a classroom where they can get feedback, and not under the pressure of a deadline in a massive newsroom.”

However, McCue and Roache also acknowledged other barriers, such as funding support, that make their reporting courses—and, in a larger sense, journalism programs—inaccessible to young Indigenous people. “The challenge is that Miʹkmaq, and I think other Indigenous young people, don’t see themselves in journalism [and] that’s something we’re working hard to change,” Roache says. “It’s going to take time and we have to play the long game.”

For both McCue and Roache, an important next step is ensuring the journalism programs they are part of actively recruit and train the next generation of Indigenous journalists. At Carleton, McCue says the work looks like hosting a video and audio course for Indigenous storytellers over the summer in partnership with local First Nations colleges and institutes. At King’s, Roache says the journalism program has created three fully funded scholarships for Miʹkmaq students, the first cohort of which will begin their studies this fall. It was created in partnership with Ann Sylliboy of the Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey, the educational authority for 12 of Nova Scotia’s 13 Mi’kmaq First Nations. The university also pledged a $600,000 investment to support Indigenous students.

According to Roache, the increased funding and scholarships are but one step in King’s University’s approach to holding space at the urging of journalism students, who have been demanding diversity in faculty, staff and curriculum in the journalism program since 2015.

For Catriona Koenig, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation who grew up in Ottawa and a former Carleton student who took McCue’s course, it’s important to make courses on responsibly reporting about Indigenous communities mandatory for journalism students. Taking experiential learning courses created and taught by Indigenous faculty, she says, is an opportunity to learn how to be a “storyteller and not a story-taker.”

“For so long, journalists would go into Indigenous communities and tell their story, and then just leave and burn bridges and not continue relationships and not strengthen partnerships,” she says. “[It’s important] to make sure to continue these partnerships with communities, keep in touch, and maintain the relationship.”

Collage by Valerie Thai

Isabella Calahoo-Zeller was attending eighth grade in Alberta when she received sex education for the first time. It consisted of a YouTube video about consent, and not much else. “We didn’t really get much on what a penis looks like, or what a vulva looks like,” Calahoo-Zeller says. “We never got the birth video that you hear so much about. So for me, I was like, what is this?”

Calahoo-Zeller is one of many young people in Alberta, and across Canada, who have been left wanting more from the sex ed experience offered in schools. Research by the Sex Information & Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN) has shown that 82.5 percent of young people across Canada see sex ed as a basic right for all.

These results come at a time when political and popular support for sex education seems to be shifting. Across the country, some parents, who claim to be advocating for parental rights, have been extremely vocal in their distaste for comprehensive sex ed, especially content focused on 2SLGBTQIA+ identities. According to Statistics Canada, about four percent of the population identifies as 2SLGBTQIA+. This means that if queer and trans-related content is left out of sex ed, many young Canadians won’t be receiving essential information about their health.

In Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick, trans and nonbinary young people’s rights in the education space are on a backslide. New policies by the United Conservative Party, the Saskatchewan Party, and the Progressive Conservative Party respectively around the use of changed names and pronouns, as well as sex-ed access, are increasing the number of hoops through which young people have to jump to be recognized as their authentic selves and access resources made to support them.

“You’re already struggling in surviving to be yourself. How can you ask for help when the help doesn’t want to help you, right? I think it’s really a struggle right now being a trans person,” says Calahoo-Zeller, who is Two Spirit.

The benefits of receiving comprehensive sexuality education have been proven by science, and they’re not just about healthy and safe sex. From a violence prevention perspective, sex ed is key because it builds knowledge and understanding of bodily autonomy. It can be the first place children who are being abused learn that what’s happening to them is not okay. The health and safety aspect of sexuality education is essential, but that’s no less true of learning about gender identity, self-expression, and the full spectrum of human relationships.

“Historically, sexual health education focused on issues related to problem prevention. It has been focused on the needs of heterosexual, cisgender, white youth primarily, and focused on preventing unwanted pregnancies and preventing sexually transmitted infections,” says Jessica Wood, research and project development lead at SIECCAN. “It’s really important to understand that sexual education is not just learning about safer sex and reproduction, but should be a comprehensive approach to learning about sexuality and bodies and relationships, personal and interpersonal well-being, gender and sexual diversity, and values and rights.”

Because education falls under provincial jurisdiction, sex ed experiences are known to vary widely across Canada. Approaches can differ even between classrooms in the same school, as educators have different levels of comfort and training in delivering this knowledge. This means some students get all of the details, while others are left in an unfortunate state of ignorance. And it’s not just their own openness to the topic that educators must negotiate with: the volume of anti-trans rights rhetoric can also affect the classroom.

But, according to Janani Suthan, the comprehensive sexuality education program coordinator at the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the perception that support for comprehensive sex ed is decreasing isn’t always rooted in reality. “The majority of parents, in the grand scheme of things in Canada, are supportive of their children learning about their sexual health in schools, and learning it holistically and comprehensively,” they say. “But the people that are against this are very loud and very proud about it, and are mobilizing.”

Wood also says it’s a small minority of people who are actually against students learning this critical information. Advocacy against comprehensive sex ed, led by groups like 1 Million March 4 Children and Parents for Choice in Education, are often well organized and well funded. Religious and political interest groups have a strong hand in the work of such organizations.

The spread of misinformation and disinformation about sex ed on social media has contributed to the movement. “And so when we hear about this often, it may seem as if more people are not supportive of comprehensive sex ed,” Wood explains. “We find that a lot of people actually are, but we just don’t hear that coverage as much.”

This disproportionate coverage of dissenting voices leads to the spread of myths about sexual health, sex education, and queer and trans experiences. “They don’t want youth to know about gender, [or] sex,” says Suthan. “They are fearful of youth having knowledge, of youth having skills to understand themselves better.”

If queer and trans experiences aren’t taught as part of sex ed curriculum, that leaves young people vulnerable. Since sex ed is a health and safety issue, it is reasonable to expect that all students should have equal access to it. “It’s suicide prevention, it’s mental health care. It’s everything, because a lot of issues end up linking to sexuality and relationships,” Suthan says. “It’s very much necessary for everybody.”

For those who are supportive of sex ed in the classroom, it has never been more important to speak up for young people’s right to access information. “If you can advocate, advocate. If you can’t, that’s okay,” says Suthan. “Show up for your kid.”

Sharing knowledge with young people can help to build acceptance and understanding, some of the most important parts of living a fulfilled life. “Community is where I found more information on being Two Spirit,” says Calahoo-Zeller. “You get to understand yourself and also other people… we don’t have secrets. There’s nothing to hide.”

Art by Valerie Thai

Ronnie Riley learned through social media that their first novel was facing censorship. Riley was scrolling late one evening when they saw what appeared to be a leaked school memo. Their middle-grade book about a non-binary pre-teen named Jude was one of four 2SLGBTQIA+ books that Ontario’s Waterloo Catholic District School Board was trying to get out of students’ hands.

The book wasn’t explicitly banned, but there were enough hurdles for kids to access the novel that Danny Ramadan, the chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, called the decision a “shadow ban” in an interview with the Toronto Star. (Ramadan’s book Salma Writes a Book, part of his children’s series about a young immigrant, was also challenged by the school board.)

Riley, whose work so far is most prominent in the Canadian children’s literary scene, says that while they anticipated having some issues in the U.S., it’s difficult to acknowledge that Canada is not immune to book bans. “In the States…they’re more vocal,” Riley says. “But I do believe that it’s happening in Canada, just very quietly.”

Advocacy groups in the U.S.—Parents’ Rights in Education, Citizens Defending Freedom and Moms for Liberty are three of the most vocal organizations—represent a growing trend of censorship there. By re-framing language as advocating for parental rights rather than literary censorship, groups like these have been able to successfully ban books. This harms children by suppressing their ability to access information, though advocacy groups often claim that they’re trying to protect children from explicit and inappropriate materials. And, though in its characteristically slower, slightly quieter way, the same has been happening in Canada, with an increase in book ban requests here in recent years.

It’s not just these authors’ books that are at risk. Without them, children have fewer opportunities to learn about other people and customs, and about themselves. Children’s education and exposure to different ways of life are under threat, and public libraries may be, too.

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In the U.S., recent data from the American Library Association (ALA) found that “[books] targeted for censorship at public libraries grew by 92 percent from 2022 to 2023,” and “47 percent of challenged materials represent the voices and experiences of those in the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community.” In Texas, 578 books were banned in the 2021-22 school year, 424 in Pennsylvania, and 401 in Florida.

Moms For Liberty, a so-called parental rights group that reports having over 130,000 members, has often made the news due to its continuous calls to ban children’s books in libraries and schools across the country. In July 2023, they were successful in getting five books banned across Leon County schools in Tallahassee, Florida. The books had characters dealing with HIV, sexual assault, leukemia, and life after death.

While parental calls to ban books aren’t always successful, the ones that are can set off a political ripple effect for other parts of the country. “What we know to be true in several states is that they’ve been following each other in a race to the bottom about how many books you can ban in how many different ways,” says John Chrastka, executive director and founder of EveryLibrary, a non-profit political action organization focused on fighting book bans in the U.S.

Chrastka references data from the Unpacking 2023 Legislation of Concern for Libraries report, created by EveryLibrary to examine the status of bills in the U.S. aiming to censor access to books in both school and public libraries. Chrastka says that EveryLibrary was able to track that some bills, despite being in different states, were using the same language as one another to ban books. “That cut and paste job—that copycat—is sometimes very explicit,” he says. “And sometimes it’s based on the intent of the law: how can we make it easier to call a book criminal, call a book obscene, call a book harmful?”

There’s a clear “feedback loop,” Chrastka says, between groups like Moms For Liberty and politicians when it comes to banning books, meaning that citizen organizations and political leaders are influencing each other. “It is a witch’s brew of interest groups that are utilizing a fairly soft target—public libraries—which are intended to be, under law, under Supreme Court precedent, public forums, and the materials are available for all—as long as they’re legal,” he says. “If you can say that those books about those human beings are obscene or criminal or harmful, you can make an attack on those populations by proxy, whether it’s LGBTQ or Black and Brown communities.”

When libraries refuse to remove books from their shelves, parents sometimes push to remove their funding altogether in retaliation. Chrastka says that while not every library will lose funding from continuing to stock challenged books, there have been and continue to be states where this is the case. In Alabama, a legislative code change, enacted this past May, made $6.6 million in state funding for public libraries contingent on their compliance with the Alabama Public Library Service Board’s guidelines about restricting access to books deemed inappropriate for certain ages.

This isn’t just happening in southern states. In Michigan, the Patmos Library nearly lost 84 percent of its funding after the town’s residents voted twice that taxpayer money shouldn’t support the library as long as it continued to supply 2SLGBTQIA+ books. But library staff would not remove the books, and after a third vote, the library will remain open.

When asked whether parental requests for libraries to censor 2SLGBTQIA+ materials could lead to budget concerns, the ALA told This Magazine in a written statement that while they don’t have national data to validate this correlation, they felt this outcome was unlikely: “Although it is challenging to quantify, these incidents emphasize the ongoing importance of defending libraries as vital community resources,” the statement reads.

As Chrastka says, though, “This is not a casual social interaction. This is a political movement.” It’s a movement that’s travelling north of the border, and in an unprecedented way.

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Fully banning a book in Canada is a tough task, and it’s not always clear how it can be done. Public libraries, though funded by municipalities, are run by independent boards which have jurisdiction over the contents of their shelves. Libraries usually respond to disputes by following their challenge policies or request for reconsideration policies. In Canadian schools, the process for vetting books often involves the board developing selection methods through training with librarians, and then trusting librarians to implement those methods. Curricula are set by provinces, and teachers decide how best to meet the curricula. It’s not the role of school boards to police individual books, though parents sometimes appeal to them in attempts to bypass any formal selection and reconsideration processes that boards entrust librarians to follow. When these policies do not exist—and they often don’t—it’s often board members and administrators who end up handling the issue and responding to parental pressures.

Shadowbanning, though, is easier to accomplish. It can include what happened to Riley, where their book was moved to a shelf inaccessible by students and “a teacher must provide the Catholic context” before students are allowed to borrow the book. Basically, citizens and school districts are finding other ways to get books out of people’s hands rather than outright banning them. In the words of Fin Leary, the program manager at We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit organization focused on making the publishing industry more diverse, the goal is to “not have them seen as often.” He says it’s much harder to fight this kind of censorship.

Regardless of whether or not a book is challenged in a public library or a school, book bans affect both readers and authors. A November 2023 statement from the Ontario Library Association said that a diverse representation of books helps students “learn how to navigate differences and develop critical awareness of their environments.” The largest worry, according to Canadian School Libraries, is that groups calling for censorship in the U.S. will continue to inspire Canadians to use similar organization tactics.

According to data from the Canadian Library Challenges Database (CLCD), Canadian libraries facing the most calls for censorship are the Edmonton Public Library (143 requests), the Ottawa Public Library (127 requests) and the Toronto Public Library (101 requests). While the database has information from as early as 1998, some libraries have only reported censorship requests from recent years.

Michael Nyby, the chair of the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations, said in an article published on Freedom To Read’s website that library challenges from September 2002 to August 2023 represent the highest number ever recorded in Canada in a twelve-month period. According to data from the CLCD, books and events with 2SLGBTQIA+ content made up 38 percent of all challenges in 2022. (Between 2015 to 2021, less than 10 percent of all challenges were connected to 2SLGBTQIA+ matters.) Books surrounding sexual content (19 percent) and racism (16 percent) made up the next highest percentages. The influence of library censorship in the U.S. also extends to books on drug use, abuse, violence, grief, and death.

Though Riley’s novel’s shadow ban was overturned after public outcry, concerns about a rise in book censorship in Canada, and calls to defund in the event that it doesn’t happen, aren’t without reason. At the Prairie Rose School Division (PRSD), a Manitoba-based school board, 11 requests for books to be banned were made in just 2023. Among them were 2SLGBTQIA+ books like Juno Dawson’s This Book is Gay. Dawson, who spent seven years working as a sex-ed teacher, described the nonfiction book as “essentially a textbook.” Each chapter of the book focuses on a different aspect of queer life, including definitions of 2SLGBTQIA+ identities, the history of HIV/AIDS, and sex. The book also addresses the importance of queer dating apps and using sexual protection. According to the PRSD, parents proposed banning this book (among multiple others) for reasons of pornography— though the book teaches children about bodies, and is not pornography. The school board said there was “some connection with the Concerned Citizens Canada Twitter account,” but not whether the parents proposing the ban were part of the group, which self-describes as “addressing sexually explicit materials being made available to children in our public libraries.” Still, the group’s account falsely tweeted that This Book is Gay was encouraging minors to solicit sex from adults on Grindr. The school board did not end up removing Dawson’s book (or the others proposed in the ban), but Concerned Citizens Canada is just one of many social and political groups that continue to advocate for book censorship.

In the summer of 2022, Manitoba’s South Central Regional Library was also pressured to remove three books about puberty and consent from shelves. Residents protested a library board meeting, flooded city council meetings, and said public library funding should be removed if the books weren’t, calling them “child pornography.” However, both Cathy Ching, the library services director, and local city councillor Marvin Plett both denied these claims. “Calling books pornographic does not make it so,” Plett said at a Winkler council meeting in July 2023. “Censuring books based on content that some find objectionable can have far-reaching and unintended implications.”

Around the same time, in Chilliwack, B.C., the RCMP were called to investigate after books there were reported for alleged child pornography in schools, too. Also in 2023, library picture books about gender in Red Deer, Alberta were vandalized. A page about using a singular “they” pronoun for nonbinary people was ripped out, according to a news report from the Red Deer Advocate.

Though the case in Chilliwack was dismissed and the books in Red Deer were replaced, parents’ calls to defund the Manitoba library if certain books aren’t removed echoes bills proposed by American lawmakers stressing that libraries should lose funding if bans aren’t enacted. And while books aren’t being overtly removed from shelves in Canada very often, there are other, sometimes more insidious impacts this attitude is having on queer and racialized youth.

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The Toronto Public Library (TPL) is Canada’s largest public library system. When asked about whether groups like those in the U.S. seeking to defund libraries for not removing 2SLGBTQIA+ material could affect what happens in Toronto, the media team at TPL said in an emailed statement that its budget is not affected by these groups. “We are governed by a library board and while our budget is ultimately approved by City Council, our materials selection is governed by our Board policies,” the email reads.

TPL’s Intellectual Freedom Challenges – 2023 Annual Report states that none of the requests to remove books from its shelves were successful that year. However, the same report also acknowledges that there are other issues at play. “TPL has experienced objections to 2SLGBTQ+ content outside of the formal request for reconsideration process, with opposition to Drag Queen Story Time programs at five branches and protests at three of them; damage to Progress Pride decals at eight branches; vandalized Pride Celebration displays at two branches; and vandalized 2SLGBTQ+ books at one branch.”

Historical book banning represents violence and censorship. Current book bans, though they may be disguised as parental rights, are more of the same. Vandalism of Pride displays at TPL is another form of violence, and while it may not be physical in nature, it has lasting effects that can harm queer youth for years beyond the act itself.

Banning queer and trans people’s books sends the message that these folks shouldn’t exist, at least not publicly. Ideas like these contribute to the state of widespread violence against them. Recent data from Statistics Canada found that around two thirds of 2SLGBTQIA+ Canadians had experienced physical or sexual violence. However, this number could be much higher: data from the same report found that around 80 percent of physical assaults against this group within the year prior to the survey didn’t “[come] to the attention of the police.”

Many 2SLGBTQIA+ people also struggle with feelings of suicidality. In the U.S., data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 29 percent of trans youth have attempted suicide. In Canada, researchers at the University of Montreal and Egale Canada reported that 36 percent of trans people in Ontario experience feelings of suicidal ideation. Systemic discrimination, erasure, and invalidation contributes to this, and book banning is part of this wider package of behaviours that harms the community.

Canadian author Robin Stevenson was interviewed for PEN Canada about her children’s rhyming picture books, Pride Colors and Pride Puppy!, being targeted by the recent wave of book censorship in the U.S. and Canada. “Book banners say that they want to protect children, but they are doing real harm to the very children they claim to protect,” Stevenson said, explaining that “learning to hate yourself was far more dangerous than any book could ever be.”

Leary says that removing these types of books from libraries can send a message to publishers: if they notice that titles aren’t making it to school libraries or are banned, it could discourage them from publishing and promoting them. “As much as the book bans are horrifying, they also are so much scarier when you consider the larger context of why they’re happening—because it’s to legislate folks out of existence, or to legislate folks out of having an education about these topics.”

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Representation matters because it helps reduce stereotypes. Books with diverse representation are vital. They can help teach empathy and understanding, while also showing readers that they aren’t alone in their experiences. Diverse books also teach a fuller picture of history, sharing stories previously overlooked. They are a key aspect of a well-rounded education.

While it is a terrifying moment for queer and racialized writers, authors are not silencing themselves as a result of the pushback. Protecting their work from the possibility of being banned, though, will take a concerted effort on the part of anyone hoping to support them.

Riley believes that the shadow ban of their novel at the Waterloo Catholic District School Board was only overturned because of statements from not only their publisher, but other authors as well. They say they had a sound support system, and that helped.

That kind of unified support is crucial to fostering an environment that permits the continuation of freedom in publishing. Leary says that from an advocacy standpoint, parents opposing book censorship have the most power when they stick together. “Our voices are stronger when we are collectively organizing, and it also kind of allows parents to have each other to lean on,” he says. One way to do this is by communicating with school board members and going to community meetings that include opportunities to speak to these issues.

Riley keeps their final advice to anyone passionate about this issue simple and blunt. “Keep speaking out,” they say. “Keep making sure that books get into the hands of kids—especially queer books.”

Photo courtesy of Meghan Parker

It’s been said that the medium is the message, but how much say do we have over which mediums shape our experiences—and how might they shape our education? Meghan Parker, an art teacher at a public high school in North Vancouver, considers this question in her recent thesis, “Art teacher in process: An illustrated exploration of art, education and what matters”—a 268-page comic book created for her master’s in arts education at Simon Fraser University.

Challenging conceptions that scholarship should be textual—“12-point font, Times New Roman,” as Parker puts it—her work demonstrates how scholarship can be artful and that art can be scholarly. The thesis is structured into chapters titled after the seven elements of art—line, colour, form, texture, shape, space, and value—which act as real-life metaphors for Parker’s inquiries. Together, the elements converge to form a site of praxis, where the theories and thinkers Parker engages with are in direct conversation with reflections and questions toward her own methods as an art teacher.

Parker anchors this praxis by illustrating herself as narrator, taking us on a journey à la Magic School Bus across scenes from her daily classroom experiences, while also integrating quotes from theorizers she is influenced by, self-reflexive musings, and scenes from her home life. The combination of visuals and text in comic-book form allowed her to depict how scholarship, teaching, learning, life, and art are all interwoven practices. Creating an autobiographical comic also enabled Parker to insert her own body within her scholarship, illustrating how knowledge is deeply embodied—something our educational system often tends to forget.

Through exploration and the support of her supervisors, she was ultimately able to find her chosen medium, carving out a space for herself in academia to represent knowledge in a way best suited to her research. For Parker, scholarship boils down to the following: communication, advancing ideas, and reflection. One of her biggest takeaways from doing this work was that form really matters when communicating one’s ideas—that the how is just as important as the what. Going forward as an educator, she aims to continue making learning accessible and diversified in her classroom, “to inspire others to find their form, to be the artist in them, whatever that form may be.”

William Chemno’s educational journey in Toronto began in Parkdale, a small but bustling neighbourhood in the city’s west end. Originally from Kenya, the 32-year-old had his sights set on a post-secondary education. Chemno knew that in order to be successful in a post-secondary program, he needed to improve his reading, writing, and math skills. So, he joined Parkdale Project Read’s Academic Upgrading Program, a community-based adult literacy program. Immediately, he got to work: He learned how to write a proper essay, improved his grammar and punctuation in writing, and built confidence in his reading abilities.

The program “is where I got my foundation,” he says. “They prepared me to go to college.”

Chemno is one of many Canadians working to improve his literacy in part to achieve greater academic and personal goals. Still, there is little awareness of just how important adult literacy is. As an adult literacy practitioner who works with learners in community-based programs in Toronto, I know that it is an often-overlooked issue that’s rarely discussed in larger policy discourse. Decision-makers and elected officials at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels still haven’t fully grasped the importance of ensuring that all Canadians are giving the support and resources to increase their literacy and numeracy skills.

If adult learners do not have basic literacy and numeracy skills, everyday tasks become difficult: It becomes harder to apply for jobs, read to their children and grandchildren, complete government forms, vote, and access social supports. The implications of adults with low literacy skills have significant social and economic effects.

Learning to read, write, and do math in the dominant language of the society that you live in is practising how to communicate. It involves building skills, perspectives, and knowledge face-to-face and electronically that is relevant and meaningful. For the many adults working to improve their literacy and numeracy skills, the issue can no longer be invisible.

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Adult literacy in Canada has a long and rich history. Beginning in the 1800s, the Mechanics’ Institutes in Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia provided information and learning opportunities to labourers exclusively. In 1893, the National Council of Women, an advocacy organization based in Ottawa whose mission was to improve the conditions of women and families, was founded. Home and school associations expanded, public lectures were given in many communities, and educational programs were organized by religious and other groups. By 1899, Frontier College was established and began providing literacy support to individuals in remote communities, who worked in industries such as mining and logging, and eventually extended its educational services to people in prisons, factories, migrant farms, rural populations, domestic workers, and immigrants, as well as those experiencing homelessness.

On the international stage, Canadians made contributions to organizations such as the International Congress of University Adult Education and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). During the UNESCO conference in Tokyo in 1972, and under the leadership of a Canadian adult educator, James Robbins Kidd, in 1973, the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) was established.

Today, there remains a lack of understanding and awareness of adult literacy and its role in being active and engaged in a democratic society. UNESCO defines literacy as a right and takes a humanistic approach to education, with a central concern for inclusiveness that does not marginalize. Through this lens, consider Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire’s take on learning: He believed that education and politics are connected, suggesting that the acts of teaching and learning are political acts in and of themselves. Therefore, when we examine adult literacy and its importance in Canada on a systemic level, it is a political act.

Under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, adult literacy education became increasingly political across the country after a drastic policy shift. Many adult literacy programs experienced funding cuts, and adult literacy was no longer defined as a means of life-long learning and inclusiveness but as “essential skills.” In 2007, the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills (OLES) was established to support adult Canadians in improving their essential skills to enter and succeed in the job market. Federal policies made the assumption that adult learners who were working on improving their literacy skills did so solely for employment purposes. As a result of this federal shift, provinces began to follow suit. Funded by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities in Ontario under the Employment Ontario model, the Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework, for instance, became heavily focused on employment. As a result, those seeking literacy skills for anything other than employment-specific reasons became furthered marginalized.

To better understand the issue, I reached out to other literacy workers, like me, across the country who are working to improve access to literacy education and increase its visibility. The many practitioners that I spoke to have been working in the field for decades and continue to be deeply committed and passionate about their work. The consensus: There’s still plenty of work to be done.

“I thought we were moving toward better research, a more evidence-based approach to adult literacy. But that was all eliminated with the [Harper] cuts and it sent a very strong message about the national effort to address literacy,” says Deanna Allen Champagne, former executive director of Laubach Literacy in New Brunswick. “It wasn’t important enough to maintain that kind of federal commitment.” Terri Peters, a professional development specialist with Calgary Learns, agrees: “The changes in government policy had a profound effect on adult literacy policy, which further marginalized and isolated the field.” These policy changes, Allen Champagne adds, ignore the larger issue of adult literacy outside of a workplace environment, minimizing its overall visibility in the country.

Jenny Horsman, a community-based researcher and educator based in Toronto with a focus on violence, trauma, and learning, echoes this sentiment. “We have shifted away from literacy [and its] relationship to text, and moved toward this bizarre focus on essential skills,” she says. “Excluding the skills the government doesn’t name as essential for work, such as the impact of violence on learning, removes funding for vital learning and teaching.” Important skills, such as public speaking or a better understanding of digital technology, are also excluded.

In the end, practitioners say, the issue of adult literacy has become tangled in a larger fight—one of decentralization of social programs in the government, of a focus not on education but of employability—that can only stand to hurt those yearning to learn.

***

For those working to make adult literacy a more visible issue, the fight starts with a better understanding of literacy in general. “‘Being literate’ is not well understood by most people,” Allen Champagne says. “We live in a society where we depend on literacy skills [so] there is an assumption that because we have access to public education people can easily acquire literacy skills.”

Peters agrees, noting that most of her friends and family outside of the industry fail to grasp what exactly issues of literacy—like the change in definition and skills training by the Harper’s government—in Canada are, and how these issues apply to everyday scenarios. Many practitioners say this is in part due to the fact that we ignore how learners themselves define literacy. “Think of the marketing and promotion of literacy programs, done by the funders… and this may or may not engage potential learners,” Allen Champagne says. “But if the definition came from learners, it would be different.”

Jayne Hunter, executive director of Literacy Nova Scotia adds: “We try to not see low literacy as a negative even though it is talked about as a deficit, but we talk about it as a tool for empowerment.”

Based on her 20 years in the literacy field, Margerit Roger, a consultant with Eupraxia Training in Winnipeg, says adult literacy should be viewed as a social justice issue. “A lack of access to literacy signals a loss of power and serves to marginalize—whether it’s an inability to read a medicine bottle, fill out a form to receive employment insurance, or the way someone struggling with literacy might be treated for their written communication.”

For Indigenous communities, this marginalization is especially potent, says Michelle Davis, executive director of the Ontario Native Literacy Coalition in Ohsweken near the Six Nations of the Grand River. Last year, when Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) practitioners met in Toronto, most agreed there is still stigma to the word literacy.

“Because our students are the ones that the education system has failed, that stigma attached that comes with our programs comes into play and we’ve got to get away from that,” she says. Media coverage usually doesn’t help matters. Often, journalism about low literacy consists of human-interest stories that don’t take a critical look at the policies and people in power who have changed the discourse on the issue. “Adult literacy does not have public credence,” Peters says.

“When I try to talk about reading, writing, and numeracy, it seems harder to engage others in what it means to have literacy knowledge and skills gaps,” adds Berniece Gowan, a project manager with the Adult Literacy and Essential Skills Research Institute at Calgary’s Bow Valley College.

But some practitioners object to it being an invisible issue. “If we say adult literacy is invisible then it becomes invisible,” says Suzanne Symthe, associate professor in the Faculty of Education at Burnaby, B.C.’s Simon Fraser University. “Adult literacy work is everywhere. It is so entangled and embedded in everyday life.” To ignore this, she says, is to lose progress.

***

William Chemno’s journey from the Academic Upgrading Program to being a student at Centennial College is a testament of how programs similar to the one in Parkdale, in addition to community-based adult literacy programs that are supporting learners with various goals, are critical in supporting adult learners who seek a second chance at learning. And for Chemno, it is thanks to his persistence and dedication as well as the support and encouragement from staff, that he has been given that second chance.

Currently, Chemno is in his third semester at Centennial College, completing his diploma to become a registered practical nurse. Now, Chemno is giving back, providing support to those in the Project Read program who are looking to improve the literacy just like he was.

Regardless of shifts in policy or governmental changes, Allen Champagne says one thing remains true about adult literacy: “It creates access—to resources and supports, opportunities, a network and support system,” she says. “It presents a new perspective on the world around you and your place in it.”

Eight students graduated from high school in Kugaaruk, Nunavut, this year.

That might sound like a tough year for education, but the graduating class of 2017 was the biggest on record for this Inuit hamlet of about 900 people. The milestone is all the more exceptional when you consider Kugaardjuq School’s secondary students finished the year after their school—the only one in the community—was destroyed by fire this past winter.

On March 1, the school’s 320 students awoke to find smoke and rubble in place of the 30-year-old building. The fire, caused by arson, was a massive loss for the isolated, fly-in community.

“It was tragic,” says Kugaardjuq principal Jerry Maciuk. “But after the initial horror, people really moved into action.” By mid-March, Kugaardjuq’s secondary students had been relocated to temporary classrooms in donated spaces around the community, like a daycare centre, a church basement, and local office spaces.

The toughest part was building morale and motivation among students, Maciuk says, who lost their regular routine and an important gathering space.

Educators in Nunavut have their work cut out for them, fires aside: Between 2001 and 2014, the territory had a 60 percent high school attendance rate, and only a third of 18-year-olds graduated from school in Nunavut.

The 2016 graduating class in Cape Dorset, another Nunavut community located farther east, on Baffin Island, knows all too well the challenges of trying to stay in school when there isn’t one.

Young arsonists (incendiary fires was the number one cause of fires in the territory in 2015) were charged with burning down the community’s Peter Pitseolak High School in September 2015, leaving those students sharing classroom space with students at the neighbouring elementary school on a split schedule. “It was hard,” says graduate Natasha Reid, who hails from Cape Dorset. “[There were] tons of students who just left.”

On top of being discouraged from staying in school, “It’s hard to forgive the people who did it,” she says of the young arsonists. “But it’s not healthy to keep a grudge. When you let go of that, you’ll be a better person.”

Reid and six other Grade 12 students persevered, graduating in June 2016.

But the school couldn’t host their graduation ceremony until this year because they needed to order new gowns, awards, and other supplies that were lost in the fire.

For students in Cape Dorset and Kugaaruk who’ll be waiting a few years until new schools are built, Reid has some advice: Don’t give up hope. “Education opens doors.”

When most kids in his age are in a classroom learning angles, Ben Hewitt’s son is making a bow. He’s testing the string and the flex of the wood. He shoots an arrow and figures out which angle makes the arrow fly the farthest, flinging them around the Vermont acreage the Hewitts call home. He’s been making bows for the past few months now. He was never shown how and no one told him he should or that he needed to. He doesn’t get graded on how his bow looks or how straight his arrows fly, because he doesn’t have any teachers. He learns on his own about whatever interests him that day.

As Hewitt outlines in his book Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World, his son isn’t being educated by attending school but by discovering and understanding the world around him as he chooses to experience it. The Hewitts, like a growing number of North American parents, are turning to alternative forms of educating their children in a system they believe will better nurture the desire to learn than formal, traditional education. One such method is known as “unschooling.”

Proposed by educator John Holt in the 1970s, unschooling is a form of education that advocates for student-chosen activities as the primary form of learning. Its core goal is to separate the idea of learning from that of formal academic settings and signatures. It eschews the structures often accepted as required for education: There are no tests, no set curriculum, and most importantly, no need to attend school. Instead, this form of homeschooling places trust in the natural curiosity of a child to dictate what they want to learn—and how they want to learn it.

Unschooling parents don’t consider themselves teachers, either. They view their role as facilitators, there to provide guidance to support the direction of the child. Advocates of the unschooling philosophy claim people, especially children, learn best when interested and engaged with the material and, since the child chooses what they’ll learn, that interest is already present. It doesn’t require teachers striving to discover a way for children to connect to the material, because the child has already made the choice to engage. Essentially, unschooling gets other people out of the way.

Alternative learning often makes people uncomfortable—and unschooling, an extreme form of untraditional learning, is no exception. It removes many of the parts that are normally used in our understanding of the idea of learning. But are our current, traditional methods of schooling really that much better?

Opponents say unschooling, like homeschooling as a whole, may be a hindrance to child development. Primarily, critics argue that school is a child’s main source of socialization. Despite there being many avenues where homeschooled children can socialize—the internet has made it much easier for like-minded parents to meet and organize a community, not to mention recreational sports, church, or community events—the mental image of a stunted, socially lacking homeschooled child still persists in the minds of many. A 2011 study, published in The Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning, found some validity to this claim. Of 75 people who identified as being unschooled for at least three years in their childhood or adolescence—one of the only studies conducted to explore how unschooled children end up as adults—one out of five respondents cited social isolation as a problem.

Then there is the lack of qualifications and the level of knowledge of the parents themselves. If your child, for example, takes an interest in physics at a young age while you struggled with high school math, your role as a facilitator may end up holding back your child’s development. That said, in the aforementioned study, 83 percent of respondents went on to pursue some form of higher education. In fact, according to the written response component of the study, the biggest issue faced by parents who practise unschooling is feeling they need to convince people it isn’t absurd.

Alison Acheson, a practitioner of this method of learning, herself a lecturer at the University of British Columbia, says she’s often asked about what happens if a child doesn’t want to do anything at all. She finds it odd “how easily accepted the idea that a child, if left alone, will do nothing. And if they do, so what? Let them bore themselves back to life. And sometimes all of us need to sit and stare out a window for as long as needed.”

The ideology of unschooling is also meant to sever the concept that our time spent in school should define our childhood. Think of how many hours are spent in a classroom: 30 hours a week, plus homework, for 12 years until students are ready to start their adult lives. But unschooling argues that life doesn’t begin only after schooling has commenced. Childhood shouldn’t be viewed as a means to an end; it’s not an appetizer with the main course coming only after graduation.

School sets guidelines, most times by necessity due to class size, unruly students, or budget constraints. These guidelines and regulations perpetuate a set type of learning, commonly leaning toward rote memorization: Children learn how to memorize information in order to take tests, not how to apply that information into new scenarios. It’s a style of learning that hinders critical-thinking skills.

Scheduling education also defines a time when we consider ourselves having to learn. The aptitudes or interests of a child are sidelined to the demands required of formal education. Activities and hobbies pursued outside of those school hours are categorized in our mind as “play.” That’s not the problem—we need play.

But, when we internalize a difference between play and work, the pleasure we receive from the latter decreases. It’s well documented that people’s enjoyment of an activity suffers when there is an expected external incentive, such as money, prizes, or in the case of school, grades. We begin to associate the activity as a task instead of as an interest, and we complete it for the reward, the fun of it—not because we really want it completed.

Creating a learning environment without defined schedules and structures reinforces the idea that learning can happen anywhere, any time. And since the student chooses what to learn, he or she views it as a passion. Interest, then, is self-motivated. As is the case with Ben Hewitt’s son and his bows, the measure of success isn’t always what he’s learning, but that he’s learning.

It’s clear I’ve been side-stepping a major, fundamental problem with the subject of unschooling: It simply isn’t feasible for the vast majority of parents, as it involves a constant presence when many cannot provide that due to other constraints, such as work. But that doesn’t mean that the principles at the heart of unschooling can’t be incorporated into a child’s relationship with learning. The components within this school of thought that foster a life-long interest in learning—a focus on intrinsic motivation, self-determination, and cultivating, not regulating, an interest in activities— are not incompatible with a traditional education. For most, schools are required to prepare children for the world—but it shouldn’t define theirs.

Although the last residential school in Canada closed in 1996, the effects of its policies enacted to erase Indigenous culture remain. “These policies were extremely damaging to the language, which lies at the heart of who Inuit are,” writes Nikki Eegeesiak, executive director of the non-governmental Coalition of Nunavut District Education Authorities (CNDEA). In Nunavut, more than 85 percent of the population is Inuit. About 70 percent of Nunavummiut grow up learning Inuktitut, and one and a half percent grow up learning Inuinnaqtun.

The goal of the Nunavut Education Act is to establish a bilingual education system by 2019, with students from kindergarten to Grade 12 learning Inuktut (a term used by the Nunavut government to refer to Inuit language dialects used in the territory) and either English or French. But a 2013 report by the Auditor General of Canada found the territory was not going to meet its goal, due to a shortage of bilingual teachers and Inuktuk classroom materials.

In response, the Government of Nunavut proposed Bill 37 in March 2017, which would amend the Education Act and the Inuit Language Protection Act, a statute promising parents the right to have their children educated in Inuktut from kindergarten to Grade 3. This amendment would prolong Nunavut’s goal of having a bilingual education system by more than 10 years. With more than half of the Inuit population in Nunavut under the age of 25, many in the territory will not have received a formal bilingual education— disconnecting another generation of Nunavummiut from their culture.

If passed, Bill 37 would aim to create standardized education models that include Inuktuk and focus on increasing the number of bilingual teachers. This sounds hopeful, but vague. The bill has been critiqued for planning to restructure an entire education system when what it really needs is more teachers and classroom resources. “The [government] wants to control language of instruction, yet has taken no responsibly [sic] for the lack of planning for Inuktitut teachers or the shortage of learning materials,” Donna Adams, chairperson of the CNDEA, writes.

“Today, school systems in the Arctic are trying to rebuild the education systems so that Inuit language, culture, and history are at the foundation,” writes Eegeesiak. Without a system that prioritizes Inuktut, Nunavut, and Inuit culture will be lost.

Nonetheless, Peterson fights hard for their attention. During his lectures, he paces around the room, his voice fluctuating in tone and dynamic as he waxes theoretical on a string of elaborate hypotheses. He likes to sporadically lock eyes with individual students in the first few rows, approaching them swiftly and raising his voice to get his point across. In one moment he’s dissecting the philosophy of Carl Jung, and in the next he’s reciting the contents of a dream he had the previous night (an incoherent recollection about posing as a Vitruvian man when suddenly the room fills with snakes). “Your mind is a very strange space,” he once told his audience, mid-ramble. “The minute you give it an aim, a genuine aim, it’ll reconfigure the world within keeping that aim—that’s how you see to begin with.” Most of his students let the statement pass, immersed in their social media pursuits.

It isn’t until class wraps up that Peterson becomes the centre of attention. The 54-year-old packs up his belongings and navigates past the foot traffic toward a clear space in the outside corridor. Instantly, eight students line up to speak with him. A short, bearded man, no more than 21 years old—perhaps one of Peterson’s students, perhaps not—shakes his hand vigorously. “I just want you to know how much it means to me, what you’re doing,” the man says. Peterson nods, and wishes him well. A similar exchange transpires with the next three students in line, keeping Peterson in the hallway for the next 10 minutes. These are the Peterson followers, the devoted fans that have emerged on campus to support his ideas.

Earlier in the school year, he turned heads after publicly declaring he would never use gender-neutral pronouns. He rejected the notion of a non-binary gender spectrum, and openly criticized Bill C-16, a federal bill tabled in May 2016 that would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity. He equated the requests of transgender and non-binary people to use pronouns other than “he” or “she” with the suppression of free speech, asserting that his refusal to use such pronouns could land him in hot water with human rights commissions. While many condemned Peterson’s controversial claims, he was simultaneously rewarded with a swath of devoted fans both in Canada and abroad—some of whom even show up in his weekly classes.

Mari Jang, a neuroscience and bioinformatics major at U of T, is one of them. She had only heard Peterson’s name in passing before he made headlines, but now she attends his Thursday lectures regularly. Jang finds Peterson to be a very compelling speaker. “You feel like you’re talking to a human being, and not some foreign entity standing up at the front of the classroom spitting out lecture material at you.”

Many of his fans would agree. Online, praise for Peterson’s speaking abilities seems endless. His YouTube videos receive tens of thousands of hits; more than 200,000 people were subscribed to his channel at the time of publication. Images of Peterson looking thoughtfully into the distance, accompanied by a quote of his in cursive text as though he’s Mahatma Gandhi, circulate regularly within right-wing online forums. An entire subsection of Reddit, a massive online forum, is dedicated solely to Peterson jokes.

Historically, university campuses have served as a space where authority is challenged and met with protest, often from a liberal vantage point. But Peterson has become something of a folk-hero for students opposing what they see as a status quo of liberal discourse on Canadian campuses. As “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and perceived identity politics play an increasing role in student politics—what an article on American university discourse in The Atlantic once referred to as the “coddling of the American mind”—room for discussion on sensitive subject matter is seen to have come under threat. Many students have sparked a movement that’s centred itself on the value of free speech—a fundamental right that Peterson and his fans alike say has been suppressed. In turn, campuses have become battlegrounds, pitting left-leaning students against their far-right counterparts and resulting in ugly spats that teeter on the edge of hatefulness.

***

In the mid-afternoon of October 11, 2016, a large group of students gather on the steps of Sidney Smith Hall, packing in front of the building against one another’s knapsacks. It’s just one week after the release of Peterson’s initial YouTube series, and a rally has broken out to defend Peterson’s controversial claims.

The gathering attracts both sides of the disagreement—the leftie students furious with the havoc Peterson supporters had unleashed, and the supporters themselves. Lauren Southern, a former commentator for right-wing news organization The Rebel Media, known for a stunt in which she received a doctor’s note stating she was male by pretending to identify as transgender, showed up. So did the Black Liberation Collective (BLC), fundamental dissenters of Peterson’s claims. Eventually even Peterson himself ventures outside Sid Smith, greeted by a mixture of jeers and applause. When he tries to speak to the crowd, he is drowned out by a white-noise machine that a counter-protester has hooked up to a speaker.

It’s not long before ad-hominen attacks and bursts of violence break out across the rally. A man wearing a Hells Angels jacket is isolated by police. Another man shouts, “We need more Michael Browns,” referring to a Black man shot and killed by police in Missouri in 2014, at the group of counter-protesters—suggesting more members of the Black community should be slain. A member of the trans and non-binary community smacks Southern’s microphone from her hands. By the end, a man claims to have been briefly strangled by another protester before campus police came to break it up.

In the aftermath of the heated protest, Jang decided to make a Facebook group to promote free speech on campus. She worried that many who opposed Peterson’s beliefs wanted to censor him entirely. For years, Jang worked as an interpreter for North Korean refugees, where she heard harrowing stories of the consequences the country’s laypeople would face should they say the wrong thing. Obviously, she said, Canada is nowhere near the dystopian reality of North Korea, but “one of my biggest fears is living in a world where freedom of speech is questioned.” Her experiences informed her need to defend free speech, and seeing Peterson’s willingness to defend his own motivated her to do the same.

A screenshot from the SFSS Facebook group.

Jang opened Students in Support of Free Speech (SSFS) to anyone who believed in Peterson’s right to speak his mind, whether they agreed with him or not. Almost instantly, the group gained hundreds of members. They consisted primarily of U of T students who gathered online to laud Peterson’s bravery, vigorously reminding each other of free speech’s intrinsic value in a democratic society. They praised Peterson for his brilliance and showed disdain for his dissenters—“radical leftists,” “social justice warriors,” and “the regressive left,” as they called them. (Peterson did not respond to requests for comment from This.)

The Peterson story embodied the clichéd narrative of the valiant professor fighting solo against an amorphous horde of radical, irrational college students with nose rings—and it quickly drew in students at other universities. At the University of British Columbia, the UBC Free Speech Club emerged, declaring their commitment “to cultivating an open dialogue on campus, where arguments are made with wit and reason rather than rhetoric and personal attack.” One day after Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president, about a dozen members of the club held a “coming-out party,” setting up a table outside the student commons and donning red “Make America Great Again” hats. Three hours south of UBC, the University of Victoria’s Students for Free Speech and Accountability came to fruition; within 24 hours of its inception, founders had to deny allegations that they were affiliated with neo-Nazi organizations. The groups remain niche—neither tops more than 600 students at universities with undergraduate populations well over 10,000, and their gatherings primarily remain online.

The bulk of their discourse appears to situate them in opposition to “social justice warriors”—a derogatory term to describe those who lean left and are outspoken about issues of race, gender, and sexuality. They oppose what they see as identity politics, and—as testament to their widespread adoration for Peterson—they champion the need for public debate rather than polarized silence. For dissenters, that debate is often reviled as hateful.

And hateful it became. In the months following SSFS’ inception, dialogue among its members turned from the usual Peterson praising to a mixture of sexism, anti-Semitism, transphobia, and particularly rampant xenophobia. The group attracted not only U of T students but also Facebook users in rural America sporting Make America Great Again hats, in support of President Donald Trump, in their profile pictures and images of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has been appropriated as a mascot for racist and sexist ideologies, as their cover photos. “Women are offended to know their place, which is to take care of children develop raise and hold families together,” wrote one member. “I present you with something whose threat to science is even more cancerous than creationism: postmodern feminism,” wrote another.

Nonetheless, the administrators held fast to their convictions—the members would not be banned, nor would their posts be removed. “There are many nasty things from both sides in the group, but that’s just a reflection of where our society has progressed,” SSFS vice-president Geoffrey Liew tells me over the phone. “This is a space where we can actually confront those different views instead of segregating them off into different spheres where people don’t come into contact with them.”

The group’s public relations officer, Chad Hallman, tells me he much prefers arguing with someone’s outlandish opinion rather than silencing it. “There are some pretty despicable views toward certain groups,” he says. “But when there is backlash [to those views], and people see how overwhelming [the backlash] is toward that individual spreading hate, that’s more reassuring than just deleting a post.”

The standards Hallman and his group uphold are not completely far-fetched in a larger educational context. The university has long been a site for the free exchange of ideas, and debate is encouraged among students, viewed as an opportunity to learn and grow intellectually. But as human rights commentator Steven Zhou notes, the university is also positioned as a microcosm of society at large—and when certain beliefs infiltrate campus, it’s a signal of changes to come outside of school boundaries. “The campus propaganda is a sign that this wave has reached an outer fringe of the right wing that’s looking to regain a certain kind of footing among the youth,” Zhou writes for CBC, referencing the widespread appearance of white nationalist posters on campuses across the country.

A screenshot from the SFSS Facebook group.

In early December, just two months after its inception, administrators abandoned the Facebook group, sensing that a U of T-only group would be more effective in defining the boundaries of discourse. The group quickly went the route of Holocaust denial. “Yall [sic] realize the six million number is bullshit? ” one member asked. “More Jewish propaganda trying to draw Goy sympathy.” Meanwhile, at the University of Calgary, the right-wing Wildrose Club on campus came under fire after circulating an email to its members reminding them that “feminism is cancer.” In the UBC Free Speech club Facebook group, one member asked that everyone please “keep the ad-hominen attacks to a minimum.”

***

In mid-November 2016, when it seems as though the Peterson controversy has hit its inevitable tipping point, the University of Toronto hosts a public debate on Bill C-16 between Peterson, U of T law professor and director of the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Brenda Cossman, and Mary Bryson, a professor of education at UBC. It is intended to bring the controversy’s opposing dialogues into contention. But by its end, everyone’s pre-established notions are only reaffirmed. Peterson calls human rights tribunals “kangaroo courts” that should be abolished as fast as possible. Cossman rebuts that all human rights are about is respect and dignity; if you can throw a bit of kindness on top, even better. Bryson says Peterson’s videos provide a fabulous case study in the cultural production of ignorance in an age of reactionary populism. Peterson adds that the “political-correctness police” have brainwashed everyone. There is little consensus.

But following the debate, Bryson, who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronoun they, received extensive online threats targeting their gender identity. “The best part about you being a dyke bitch, this shit dies with you, you fucking nasty subhuman piece of trash,” said one message, delivered through Facebook. In the comment section of an article by Christie Blatchford in the National Post, one person wrote: “Things like Bryson remind me of the repulsive, repugnant creatures Clint Eastwood had to deal with and eradicate in his Dirty Harry series.” (Bryson declined to speak to This for matters of safety.)

A Facebook message to Bryson following the debate.

Such instances of bigotry on campus are not confined to the Peterson controversy, but have rather expanded to form an uptick in discriminatory sentiment among many university students. “White Students Union” posters were discovered on York, Ryerson, and U of T campuses last fall, depicting two white men posing stoically in front of the CN Tower. The group responsible for the posters lists “organiz[ing] for and advanc[ing] the interests of Western peoples” as a mission statement online. Other posters reading “Fuck Your Turban” were found on the University of Alberta campus. Anti-Muslim and anti-gay graphics accompanied posters on McGill campus with “Make Canada Great Again” emblazoned as the headline.

When outgoing vice-president, university affairs of the U of T Students’ Union Cassandra Williams expressed anger over the swath of threats made toward Bryson, she was met with a distressing response. “If a trans person puts themselves out publicly, then they can’t expect to not experience violent harassment,” someone told her.

“I think that’s kind of what the culture is right now,” Williams says. “There’s an expectation that it is fair, or justified, or it’s ‘just the way things are,’ that a trans person, should they choose to speak out in defence of themselves in their community, should they choose to just be visible or have a high profile, is bringing that sort of harassment or violence upon themselves.”

If human rights commentator Zhou’s theory that the campus signals change for society at large is true, the treatment of Peterson dissenters like Williams is a troubling sign: It suggests a level of comfort to express such hateful ideology. “That some of the more extreme and explicit forms of this rhetoric are being found on campuses is alarming,” Zhou writes. “It’s a sign that whoever’s responsible is looking to young people for a response and to campuses as a possible setting for mobilization.”

Countering the values of Peterson and the SSFS administrators, Williams participated in #NotUpForDebate, a protest of the forum between Peterson, Bryson, and Cossman, on November 19. “Debating whether or not different classes of people are deserving of equal rights… has always been happening with marginalized groups,” Williams, who identifies as trans, explains. “By saying that these things are not up for debate, we’re saying, ‘Look, we’re here, and we’ve always been here,’ and just [by] virtue of being humans and by virtue of us being members of society, we have, automatically, the expectation of equal rights and the expectation of freedom from discrimination.”

SSFS public relations officer Hallman fervently disagrees with #NotUpForDebate: “If there was one thing that we could do to really de-escalate the general situation, it would be to bring it more toward the space of dialogue and discussion.”

***

In recent months, Peterson shifted the arena of his discourse from U of T to a number of other universities—receiving predictably mixed reception in turn. In mid-March, he stood outside a lecture hall at McMaster University, surrounded in equal part by admirers and protesters. It was a relatively warm day for the season, and the afternoon oxygen appeared to have effectively energized both sides of the campus debacle.

“Shut down Peterson,” chanted the protesters in unison, clanging on pots and pans as they worked to drown him out.

Peterson, red in the face and unwilling to back down from a fight, vociferously reprimanded them. “You, like it or not, only have the interests of your group,” he shouted back. “And the world is nothing but a battleground between groups of different interests!”

Video clips of Peterson’s rather unflattering altercation with the angry protestors would later circulate the Free Speech clubs’ Facebook groups.

“These leftists are some of the worst activists I’ve ever seen,” wrote one. “I really wish I was back in school to fight back against these degenerates,” wrote another.

The noise peaked. Peterson lost his train of thought. A woman in front of him appeared to ask a question, but his response was drowned out by the surrounding chaos.

Eventually, both sides went home.

Photo by Hilary Gauld Commercial.

When Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt said, at a science conference in 2015, that the trouble with women in labs is they cry and fall in love, the scientific community reacted with a barrage of vituperations from both sides. For doctoral candidate Eden Hennessey, one hashtag became a call to action.

Under the banner #DistractinglySexy, female scientists took to Twitter to clarify what it’s really like for them in the lab or field. “Here I am shoulder-deep in cow rectum,” one woman tweeted. “So seductive!” Hennessey, a social psychology PhD candidate and manager at the Centre for Women in Science at Waterloo’s Wilfrid Laurier University, responded with another, more on-the-nose hashtag: #DistractinglySexist. The hashtag mobilized women across science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields to present their true stories of confronting sexism.

As part of her dissertation, #DistractinglySexist became Hennessey’s first photo-research exhibition, drawing attention to sexism in Canada’s “Silicon Valley”—Ontario’s Waterloo, Kitchener, and Cambridge areas. The project integrated art and social psychology research methods to assess whether women fighting sexism in STEM fields face greater social costs than other women, and if so, how can those costs be buffered.

The #distractinglysexy trend is phenomenal. Here I am shoulder-deep in cow rectum, so seductive! pic.twitter.com/fz0v5fygTK

— justmeness (@VanessaAdams6) June 11, 2015

If you look at a high school math or science class, you’ll notice more than half of the students are girls. In university, the number of women in STEM drops to about 39 percent. By the time they get into the workforce, women hold 22 percent of jobs in STEM fields—up just two percent from 1987.

“For women in STEM,” says Hennessey, “it’s not just the lack of women, it’s the resistant and slow rate of change.”

The sluggish improvements are both a cause and symptom of the old boys’ club culture that continues to disadvantage female scientists. While there’s myriad data describing the gender gap in STEM, Hennessey was compelled to communicate the problem in a different way.

“We all have a right to be presented facts in a way that’s easily understood,” she says during our interview, before she makes her way to a protest march in downtown Waterloo to fight for her rights in STEM labs. “I wanted to de-silo knowledge from the ivory tower and present it such that it can get us the funding we need and effect change for STEM women.” Indeed, her work is part of a small but growing movement toward academic activism. The idea is that by taking hard data and converting it into creative expression, research becomes more inclusive and creates a wider, more powerful impact.

On the heels of #DistractinglySexist, which attracted international praise, Hennessey recently launched #DistractinglyHonest. This second exhibit features female-led research that unpacks whether honesty is the best policy for women facing sexism in STEM fields.

In the series, Imogen Coe, Dean of Sciences at Ryerson University, is photographed looking over rose-hued glasses with the message: “We cannot change what we will not see.” Coe’s piece highlights that male-authored studies are deemed more scientifically valuable than female-authored ones, even when those studies are identical. “There was something intensely personal about Eden’s photo-essay,” Coe says. “She focussed on individual women and their authentic self. We’re supposed to be scientists—hence, unemotional—but the photography aspect of her exhibit made us value ourselves more. It’s about engaging men and not about fixing women.”

The stats suggest girls grow up with just as much interest in science, math, and technology as boys. The shift away from STEM, then, is linked to cultural messaging that says women and girls don’t belong.

“There are systemic barriers every step of the way for women,” says Hennessey, noting that this is particularly apparent for women who want to have children in graduate school. “For them, financial support is minimal. It’s a cultural issue and a big deterrent for women.”

Of the 14 portraits featured in #DistractinglyHonest, perhaps the most poignant is of 10-year-old Alyssa Armstrong. She’s wearing headphones inside a bubble, shielded from negative gender biases. “I want to go to Mars when I grow up,” she says.

When that time comes, Hennessy is hopeful projects like hers won’t have to exist—that Alyssa and other young women can pursue their ambitions, undeterred by flawed cultural mores. “Changes to such systemic pressures need to happen in the next decade,” Hennessey adds, “or we’ll lose another cohort of scientists.”