SAINTS PRESERVE US

Bak 2 Skool in Albertie

Those books you’ve banned, have you read them? 

The remarkable quality of free will is that it grants you the ability to either shut the fuck up or just fuck off. But overarching ignorance and negative engagement, like tolerance, are choices. I don’t care what aspect of a book offends you. But don’t you dare take offense on my behalf or anyone else’s.

Alberta’s government, lead by the Banshee of Invermectin, Premier Danielle Smith, amended the province’s Education Act last month; home schooled Christians cracking down on sexually explicit ink on paper in school libraries (toilet stall graffiti exempted). The poorly worded ministerial order was itself mildly salacious reading. It also required already overworked (and underpaid) teachers preparing for another term in overflowing classrooms to catalogue the books in their home rooms.

The Edmonton Public School Board’s (EPSB) response was a master stroke. It released its own list last Friday of more than 200 noncompliant books it would need to cull. Among the literary masterpieces was the once popular paperback Jaws. Now, fifty years ago I saw the movie and read the novel and, for the life of me, I can’t recall any graphic drunken monkey hot shark sex. When there’s fuckery about, it needs to be amplified, shamed and embarrassed. Premier Smith sniffed that the Board’s reaction constituted “vicious compliance.” But hey, rules are rules as unclear as they are written.

Remember, this is the same woman who said her Alberta Sovereignty Act could’ve been invoked to challenge Ottawa’s banning of plastic straws had it existed at the time and who, at a closed-door United Conservative Party (UCP) townhall, informed a chemtrail-obsessed conspiracy theorist that aviation is a federal jurisdiction – her sole concession to the Laurentian elite, that mysterious deep state cabal in eastern Canada whose usurious exploitation of the federal transfer payments system constitutes extortion. Also, that wildfire that devastated Jasper National Park? Ottawa’s fault.

Alberta’s UCP government is a shrew, hectoring, complaining. And it’s akin to a fiction writer, it makes things up. Competent administrations don’t conjure issues. They create policy to address current ones. And really competent ones look ahead, anticipating and maybe even pre-empting future issues or at the least, unintended consequences of immediate legislation. The EPSB leveraged the UCP’s own inadequate rhetoric and flawed ideology against it. Brilliant. Take this diktat and shove it up your clenched “trad wife” asshole. Educators are critical thinkers, a diminished fundamental skill in elected public service. The government is back on its heels over an issue of its own making, literature it needn’t have fretted about in the first place. The book ban has been paused.

Labour Day has come and gone. The Canada geese are stirring, making noises about flying south for the winter. The kids are back at school. A new year. There’s a nip in the air. Alberta skies are a crisp crystal blue, except for the black thunderhead on the horizon. Alberta’s teachers are prepared to strike. They’ve a noble cause, more resources, more support and more money to keep pace with inflation and the burden of hidden work. The government is prepared to lock them out. I can’t help but wonder if there was a more pressing file on the premier’s desk other than shark snogging and shagging.   

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer*. Of Course You Did is still available.

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