Manitoba librarian hopes human rights award will inspire others to fight censorship

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Peggy

A southern Manitoba librarian who stood up against people seeking to ban children’s sexual education books in her institution says the fight against censorship isn’t over.

Cathy Ching, the Winkler-based director of the South Central Regional Library, and the rest of her team will be granted the first-ever Human Rights Book award, the Manitoba Library Association announced Thursday.

The award, which is handed out in partnership with the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers, is meant to recognize people who uphold the values of intellectual freedom while fostering inclusive and diverse spaces in Manitoba libraries.

“Rural and more remote areas … don’t always have a lot of access to support,” said Kirsten Wurmann, program co-ordinator with the Manitoba Library Association.

“They’re dealing with a lot of issues on their own and they’re doing it in just really a wonderful, passionate way that really upholds librarianship values. And we wanted to recognize that.”

The association said Thursday Ching and the South Central Regional Library system’s long-fought battle against censorship has inspired her community and the province as a whole, prompting multiple people in the library system to nominate her for the award.

A sculpture of two children sitting on a bench reading a book sits on landscaped grounds, with a library building in the background. — A statue is shown outside the Winkler branch of the South Central Regional Library system. (Gilbert Rowan/Radio-Canada)

In 2023, Ching spoke to CBC News about a then year-long campaign to remove some children’s sexual education books from the library system, and for it to be defunded.

The librarian said Thursday it all started with a couple of challenges to some of the books they offered, but it quickly escalated from there.

“We realized it was a launching pad for … [a] group that really wanted to get any books on gay, lesbian, bi, trans [sexuality] out of the libraries,” she said. “Every day, we were pelted with something or another from people from this group.”

Ching said some branches received verbal abuse or had books stolen as a result of the campaign.

The library system would receive emails every day saying it supported pedophilia and that the people who worked there were child molesters, she said.

Gail Hildebrand, administrator of the library’s Morden branch, said the situation took a huge mental toll on people working for the system.

“We were constantly being taken away from our everyday task,” she said.

“It’s amazing what we all dealt with.… All the work that we ended up doing, just fine-tuning policies and making sure that we were protecting the rights of our patrons and not allowing very small minority to speak for everyone.”

The books which were challenged are Sex Is a Funny Word and What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg, and Robbie Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal. The latter was moved from the juvenile non-fiction section to young adult non-fiction, though Ching notes it had been in the collection since 2013 and no one had ever complained about it before.

Three books sit propped up on a table. — These three children’s sexual education books were the target of challenges at the South Central Regional Library. (CBC)

Pressure on the library only started to die off earlier this year, Ching said, as the people behind the campaign shifted their focus toward schools.

Wurmann said that while that may be the case, all libraries are still feeling the pressure.

“Library systems as big as the Winnipeg Public Library have had to deal with people … coming into libraries to talk about wanting to ban certain books on sexual health,” she said. “There’s also other smaller communities and community libraries who have perhaps put on a drag queen story time and have had protesters outside.”

In light of the situation in South Central, the association created a toolkit with guidelines meant to help librarians balance intellectual freedom with the need for social responsibility.

A new code of conduct also asks members to adhere to the basic value of “access for everyone,” and states library workers must be treated with respect, Wurmann said.

She said all librarians, whether they work on public, academic or school libraries, have to remain vigilant.

“Library workers know that they are not in this alone,” she said. “All of your library workers are working hard to ensure that Manitobans, young and old, from wherever they come from, that they feel like the library is a [safe] place to come to.”

People dressed as dinosaurs — Last September, while the 1 Million March for Children was taking place, staff at the Winkler library dressed up as dinosaurs in case protesters crashed into the library. Ching said the costumes showed that while it was a serious situation, librarians ‘got this.’ (Submitted by Cathy Ching)

Last September, while the 1 Million March for Children was taking place, staff at the Winkler library dressed up as dinosaurs in case protesters crashed into the library.

Ching said she’s been using that as an example on how similar situations could be handled.

“We took a light-hearted presentation to a serious conversation, and it helps people to understand that, yeah, this is serious, but we’ve got this,” she said.

She said she hopes the recognition from the award gives confidence to other institutions to keep “doing the right thing” and to “stand up” to people who want to take books away.

“We are, I guess, happy that it happened to us … because we are the second-largest rural library system in Manitoba,” she said. “If they attacked a smaller standalone library, they might have fallen to their pressure.”