Alberta’s book purge raises red flags
By Lethbridge Herald on March 19, 2026.
Editor:
The Alberta book ban saga just keeps going. On January 5, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides’s order came into effect, which meant that schools were required to have purged their shelves of books with “explicit” pictures, excluding purely informational or reference books (presumably, for example, a book on human anatomy).
Post-purge, the government provided numbers as to how many titles had been removed from schools (roughly 160), but there was a suspicious degree of silence (from both the government and school boards) in precisely naming which titles had been tossed.
Now we have an important update. Thanks to access to information requests (filed separately by the CBC and the Centre for Free Expression), we have the list of titles axed by Nicolaides\’ Ministerial Order. The information is readily available online via the Centre for Free Expression’s user-friendly database.
What was too “explicit” for young Albertans? Perhaps it\’s not surprising that Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel “Fun Home” was among the books removed as it\’s often in the crosshairs with book-banners. In this case, both Edmonton’s Public and Catholic boards yanked Bechdel’s text.
Other titles were indeed surprising, like “Introducing Camus,” an illustrated guide to the life and works of the Nobel laureate Albert Camus, which the Calgary Board of Education plucked from their collection. Did it represent an existential threat to young Calgarians?
More locally, the Lethbridge School Division removed two titles by the best-selling Canadian Rupi Kaur: “Milk and Honey” and “The Sun and Her Flowers,” two books of poetry published roughly ten years ago. But what made the seemingly sweet “Milk and Honey” too spicy for schoolkids in the bridge city?
The problem, of course, stems not from Kaur’s awful poetry but from the line drawings that accompany the poems. However, in “Milk and Honey,” most of the pictures have no sexual content at all. They’re just drawings of chairs, flowers, trees. It’s true that a few gesture towards sexual activity – one sketch features a woman with her hand between her thighs -but these illustrations are spare and minimalist, suggestive rather than explicit. Only a feverish imagination could turn Kaur’s pictures into pornography.
I won’t blame the Lethbridge School Division for hauling these and other titles from their shelves. They had orders, they had to do as they were told, and I imagine they weren’t happy doing so. Instead, the blame lies entirely with the Minister of Education and our UCP government.
How did we reach this point? The UCP is too willing to listen to small, special interest groups, like Action4Canada and Parents for Choice in Education, who advocated for this ban. Such groups have shaped our government and, by extension, our school systems.
Sadly, in Alberta today, a miniscule number of people can shift the discourse and promote their prejudices with province-wide repercussions. We see the same pattern at work with the separatist movement. As the saying goes, the tail wags the dog.
Here’s a frightening possibility: some school libraries are partnered with public libraries, so we might find the UCP and their friends-on-the-fringe clawing their way into the public system. Premier Danielle Smith and Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams claim they are making plans to this effect, and these plans will not bode well for people who value books, libraries, and the freedom to read.
In short, right now we can see the thin edge of the wedge, and we need to push back against this trend. Libraries, whether school, public, or post-secondary, are essential pillars of democracy.
I\’ve read that Alberta’s banned books have been boxed up and tucked away in storage. Let\’s set our sights on a triumphant unboxing ceremony in the near future. When we give those books back to our children, it will be like Christmas morning all over again.
Jacob Bachinder,
Lethbridge
17-16
I emailed the Lethbridge Catholic and public school boards as well as city library board asking if they have removed any books and, if they did, the titles. Not one has responded which suggests to me they did and hope no one finds out.