Dragged from the classroom? One teacher's lonely battle for free speech rights

A few years ago, somewhere on our great continent, a teacher showed a documentary critical of religious fundamentalism to his Grade 9 class. The next day, the Vice-Principal threatened to remove the teacher from the classroom if he continued to show the film.

Did this happen in Arizona? Idaho? Elsewhere in the Bible Belt of the United States, perhaps? Not at all--this event, which touched off a teacher's lonely, quixotic, twenty-year battle for his own free expression rights, happened in Canada's tiniest, sleepiest province, Prince Edward Island. The story that subsequently unfolded is both a triumph of principle and a human tragedy.