A father of a high school student in the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) recently sent me an e-mail from the boy’s resource teacher signed with an entire paragraph of land acknowledgements.
The signature by the resource teacher – situated over rainbow flag colours – indicates she lives and works ”on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg and Chonnonton peoples.”
She also claims that she lives and works “on lands situated on the Haldimand Tract, lands promised to, and stolen from, the Six Nations that includes ten kilometres on each side of the Grand River.”
The teacher is located at Laurel Heights Secondary School, renamed in March of this year from its original name when it opened in 2004, Sir John A. Macdonald.
This is so typical of many who work for the WRDSB under activist education director Jeewan Chanicka.
“It’s really insane,” the dad said. “The whole board is doubling down on this woke nonsense.”
Still, the fact that the dad contacted me, as others have in the past year, is a step in the right direction, especially considering school board issues – particularly trustee elections – have traditionally flown under the radar.
During 2022 some parents, like this dad, have at long last awakened to how much woke ideology has taken over Canadian school boards, particularly in Ontario and B.C. It’s been driven largely by leftist politicians who get a toehold in politics through their local school boards.
The Canadian wake-up call is far from the activism now seen south of the border where a movement called Moms for Liberty – created by Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich – have taken on school boards across the United States.
However there is hope for Canada.
In Vancouver BC, five candidates running under the ABC (A Better City) banner won trustee positions. They’ve already voted to return police liaison officers to a dozen high schools next fall.
During the last Ontario school board elections in October a variety of parent groups sprung up out of nowhere, endeavouring to fight leftist dogma.
While none of the most-known candidates featured by True North won positions, it is telling how threatened the leftist teachers unions and trustee incumbents, teachers unions, legacy media and assorted activists felt by their candidacies. These trustees were subjected to attacks on their integrity, their messaging twisted and were subject to accusations that they were “far right” and “transphobic.”
Chanel Pfahl, a 29-year-old lesbian teacher who is under investigation by the Ontario College of Teachers for speaking out against critical race theory on a private Facebook page, was the target of such attacks during her candidacy in Ottawa.
Pfahl, reached prior to Christmas, said she wasn’t surprised to be misrepresented because she’s been dealing with this form of “intolerance” since she dared stray from the rules of “woke orthodoxy” as a teacher working in Barrie back in 2020.
“They resorted again and again to labelling me as some kind of regressive intolerant being,” she said, noting the legacy media chimed in.
She said she ran because she was trying to encourage an appreciation for “free expression and open debate” to make kids more resilient and willing to challenge ideas.
Catherine Kronas, who ran for the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, found the election an “excellent opportunity” to alert the community about harmful school policies.
She said so many voters were relieved to discuss their concerns at the door and recognized that someone was willing to stand up to protect students.
“Parents in Ontario are waking up to the woke rot that is destroying education in the province,” she said.
Peter Wallace not only ran for trustee but created an entire website – blueprintforcanada.ca – outlining what is wrong with education in Canada and how to improve it.
He says since the October election, his website continues to attract interest – mostly by word of mouth.
Sometime in January, he says an American-themed version of the same platform will be launched. He’s also in the planning stages of a new website targeting university students to “counter perspectives to the relatively one-sided social justice narratives” being taught in university programs.
Wallace says he’s also working with several trustee candidates who share his concerns about education and “woke ideology.” He’s hoping they can operate collaboratively to “challenge these ideas” in public.
He’s “cautiously optimistic” about the next year as he sees the legacy media “losing its stranglehold on public discourse.”
He believes it will become difficult for the legacy media to continue ignoring the increasing number of reports of children de-transitioning and young adults openly expressing regret about being harmed by medical gender affirmative care policies.
“I look forward to an interesting year ahead,” he says.
Pfahl says she’s certainly not backing down from the fight anytime soon.
The same goes for Kronas.
“We are just at the start of fighting woke activism in schools. I will continue to fight and organize with other parents to hold HWDSB accountable,” she said.
“It’s time for more people to step up to defend education in Ontario. There is too much at stake.”
