No Margaret Atwood, please! We’re Albertan! 

Thanks to Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides’ book ban, it looks as if the work of iconic Canadian author Margaret Atwood is on a list of books to be stripped from Edmonton Public School Board libraries.

Has anyone in Canada ever banned a book by the winner of the Governor General’s Award before? Probably not. 

Well, we can’t have students getting the idea that it’s OK to dress up in red-and-white handmaid costumes and follow anti-abortion United Conservative Party ministers like Dan Williams and Adriana LaGrange around, now can we?

Of course, we’re sure to be told that’s not why The Handmaid’s Tale by Ms. Atwood, not to mention fiction by scores of other fine writers, now has to disappear from Edmonton school libraries.

It’s because it mentions … shhhhhhh! … S-E-X!

I don’t recall the sex in The Handmaid’s Tale being particularly, well, sexy. But the role it might play in an imaginary theocratic totalitarian state was certainly illuminated. You know, like the immigrant-free theocratic dystopia many members of the UCP base would like to establish right here in Alberta. 

Don’t believe me? Just listen to the most recent Gilead Next Panel town hall meeting on YouTube. 

Nevertheless, I’m willing to bet that by later today or tomorrow at the latest, Dr. Nicolaides will be saying, no, no, banning Ms. Atwood’s work isn’t what we had in mind at all. Nor that of Margaret Laurence or even Alice Munro. 

It would just be too embarrassing for him not to try to wiggle off the hook. And Ms. Atwood is no shrinking violet. She’s likely to speak up forcefully and for the record. Indeed, I wouldn’t be shocked if reporters in Toronto were already calling her about this last night. 

What she has to say will lead a lot of people to conclude – or perhaps I should say, to realize – that Dr. Nicolaides is a jackass. 

Note that Dr. Nicolaides also insists that his book ban isn’t a book ban because it forces school boards who don’t want to ban books to do the book banning, thereby allowing the government that wants certain books banned to be able to insist it’s not the book banner. That kind of logical jackassery, needless to say, fools no one. 

And by no one, I include the religious “parents’ rights” groups who drove this stupid policy in the first place. Indeed, someone should call them up and ask what they think about Ms. Atwood’s tale being banned. You might find they’re not as embarrassed by that as Dr. Nicolaides is likely to be. 

That said, they might not like Ms. Atwood, or her books, or her ideas, or those of many of the other authors on the list – but what they were after was books with 2SLGBTQ+ themes, because this is really about hate. 

So when the UCP ginned up its anti-2SLGBTQ+ book banning policy, it felt the need to fudge its motives, which is why it came up with the bright idea of penning some vague and sloppy guidelines for school libraries, supposedly to protect innocent school children from exposure to “inappropriate sexual content.”

As I wrote last month, “the true purpose of this highly performative exercise is not to protect children but to ensure the continued political support of evangelical parents of school-aged children (many of whom will nevertheless continue to enroll their kids in private religious schools or home school them), wind up homophobic and ‘anti-woke’ elements in the UCP base, and trap the party’s political opponents into appearing to defend pornography.”

The whole thing was prompted by still-unidentified literary vigilantes from a group that lobbies for private schools and home schooling and another that claims its goal is to “to protect Canada’s rich heritage which is founded on Judeo-Christian biblical principles.” They demanded to search school libraries and found a few titles with images that offended Dr. Nicolaides’ tender sensibilities. 

School boards were given the task of rooting out “explicit sexual content” and “non- explicit sexual content” for the purposes of banning, which the UCP strategic brain trust doubtless hoped would give them some cover in the event of something like what the leak of the EPS list has provoked. 

Note that Dr. Nicolaides has already hastened to tell the CBC that “we did not provide this list to EPSB.” 

“We have asked Edmonton Public to clarify why these books were selected to be pulled, and we will work with them to ensure the standards are accurately implemented,” he advised the CBC’s reporter. (Because they met the criteria that you set down, stupid!) 

Now, it is quite possible that whoever drafted the list engaged in a little vicious compliance. If so, good for them. After all, it may be the EPSB’s list, but it’s not the EPSB’s rules, and it’s certainly not the EPSB’s dumb idea. 

What’s Dr. Nicolaides going to say? Oh, you don’t have to enforce the rules if they point to a famous author admired by people who are smarter than us? Just pull them if they’re on a gay theme! Ah, but that would be tantamount to spilling the beans, wouldn’t it? 

And it’s certainly true that once the list started to circulate within the board, it made its way to social media pretty darn quickly. Again, I say, such willingness to push back is a healthy sign that Albertans’ democratic instincts have been engaged. 

By the way, also on the explicit-sex list to be banned, hilariously, is Ayn Rand’s wretched Atlas Shrugged, Danielle Smith’s ideological bible. When the premier hears about that, somebody’s gonna have some ’splainin’ to do!