Freedom to Read Week Panel

Freedom to read can never be taken for granted. Even in Canada, a free country by world standards, books and magazines are banned at the border. Schools and libraries are regularly asked to remove books and magazines from their shelves. Few of these stories make headlines, but they affect the right of Canadians to decide for themselves what they choose to read. Our neighbours to the south seem to be banning another batch of books or covering up more library shelves and display cases every week. What effect does this have on artists, activists, and the librarians whose job it is to challenge us with new ideas and concepts, as well as put books containing those ideas into the hands of readers everyday? We’ll talk to people in the Alberta literary community about the importance of intellectual freedom and what the lasting legacy of banning books really is.