Today's News: Alberta says Never Mind!

I guess Alberta premier Danielle Smith is the Emily Litella of Canadian politics.  

Cole Bennett provides an excellent summary of the whole mess with Alberta's school library book weeding list: 

Cole Bennett / Cole.notcole

SMITH’S BOOK BAN BACKFIRES AS UCP UNRAVELS
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party government have been forced to backtrack on their controversial order to remove “sexually explicit” books from school libraries after overwhelming public opposition, including criticism from Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood, whose The Handmaid’s Tale appeared on one of the removal lists.
The UCP’s education minister originally framed the directive as a way to keep pornographic material out of schools. But the actual order was far broader, prompting Edmonton Public Schools to list more than 200 titles as unacceptable in order to remain compliant. The list included Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, both internationally celebrated works studied in classrooms for decades. [To see the list, click here]
The government’s attempt to sell the policy as child protection quickly collapsed once it became clear that the scope of the ban extended far beyond what was publicly claimed. Critics say the move was less about protecting children and more about appeasing ideological lobby groups that had pressed the government to impose restrictions.
Pushback against the order snowballed over the weekend, with Atwood publicly criticizing the government twice on Twitter/X. Educators, parents, and community leaders also condemned the measure as censorship that undermines public education.
By Tuesday, the government announced the directive would be paused. While Smith has tried to cast blame on school boards for “mismanaging” the rollout, the reversal underscores the growing perception that her government is increasingly out of touch with the everyday concerns of Albertans.
....With teachers on the brink of striking and Albertans facing rising costs of living, many are asking why the province’s leadership is preoccupied with censorship and culture wars instead of solving the problems that matter most.

When we told you you to ban all the books, we like totally didn't mean to _ban all the books_, sheesh #AbPoli #AbLeg

— Victor L. McConought (@vic4alberta.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 3:44 PM

Petroleosexual MAGA groupie and un-Canadian Premier of Alberta Delusionelle Smith told reporters that educators in the province must stop maliciously interpreting the ill-conceived and often unintelligible directives given by her government of strong Conservative half-wits. #cdnpoli #abpoli

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— Freedumb of Shpiel (@freedumbofshpiel.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 5:14 PM

It was Margret Atwood who led the country in laughing at the Alberta government:

Atwood absolutely dragging Danielle Smith. #cdnpoli #abpoli

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— Jason McCrank (@jrmccranker.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 6:58 PM

Margaret Atwood / In the Writing Burrow

Handmaid's Tale Banned in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) Schools
And everyone and their pet canary wants me to "comment."
But I can’t comment when I don’t know why it’s been banned. For describing what an American theological dictatorship could look like? Because it portrays evil? Is it evil to portray evil? ...
Things are increasingly scrambled, because the Alberta government is now saying it didn’t do the dirty deed, the Edmonton school board did, in an act of “malicious compliance.” Compliance with an order the government itself issued and that school boards were compelled to implement? Whatever do they mean?...
Oh, and I agree: kids in kindergarten should not be reading this book. I wrote it for people over thirteen. (Though when I remember what I was reading when I was thirteen… all kinds of trash! And in right there in the high school classroom! The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy! Adultery! Wife-selling! Fornication, implied! Eek!)...

Atwood then includes the speech she had made yesterday, over Zoom, to the PEN International Congress in Krakow, Poland. She told the gathering:

...being a writer is in itself a risky business.
Why? Artists of all kinds – but especially writers – are always among the first to face the firing squads when dictatorships are on the rise. They have no armies. They have no actual legislative or physical power. They have no voter base. They are isolated individuals, and thus easy to eliminate. Above all, they say things that autocrats don’t want to hear, and don’t want others to hear. This is true whether the autocrat is of the right or of the left, and whether religious or secular. Artists are a threat to such people because their art presents full humanity, in all its complexity – the good, the bad, and the ugly. This full humanity is what autocrats wish to destroy, in order to replace it with propaganda featuring perfect versions of themselves. To burn a book is to burn part of the human spirit. And book burnings – and book bannings – are on the rise
just as I was writing this speech, news broke that a school board in Edmonton, Alberta – under direction from their provincial government -- had banned my book, The Handmaid’s Tale, from their school system – the classrooms, the libraries – because it was pornographic. That’s quite funny: the book has more often been criticized for not being pornographic – for having sex acts in it that are not sexy. Well, they aren’t supposed to be: it’s a Puritanical regime, after all. So in the Canadian media a minor tempest is raging, as this is the first-ever Canadian province-wide attempt at mass book banning. I’m in good company, however: Brave New World and 1984 are also on the list. I guess they don’t want young people thinking about dictatorships.
I’m happy to report that PEN Canada is protesting these book bannings. Its current Chair, Ira Wells, is the author of the recent book, On Book Banning (Biblioasis), so he knows the territory. Maybe the Alberta government will ban that book, too.
Which brings us back to PEN, the astonishing international organization of which we are members. From time to time, we PEN folk may ask ourselves – what use is all this? What can mere writers do about the massive world problems facing us? Wars, famines, genocides, climate crises? Is the pen really mightier than the sword? Not when you’ve got the noose around your neck. But until that moment – may it never come -- we can at least keep the door open a little, we can keep the candle burning, a little. We can give hope, a little, to those who’ve been imprisoned for what they’ve written. A little hope – it’s worth something. Actually, it’s worth a lot -- to know you have not been forgotten. Especially when, sometimes, a little hope is all a person has....

But apparently such larger considerations are beyond anything the Alberta education department had ever thought about - perish the thought! 

No, all they wanted was to keep "porn" away from Alberta's innocents! They certainly never thought about annoying Canadian writers across the country and embarrassing us in The New York Times. What stumble-bums:

Oh lol, now apparently they're going to try to define pornography, a topic which is famously simple* and has never been the subject of multiple Supreme Court cases*, in such a way that material that is completely legal for youth to acquire is included. *Sarcasm, obviously.

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— Bridget Stirling (@bridgetstirling.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 4:02 PM

In the end, we'll have to see how many of the 200 books actually go back on the Edmonton school shelves, and on the shelves of other schools in Alberta.
And I hope school boards in other conservative districts across the country don't make this book list an easy answer for their own school library weeding sheets.