Christine Van Geyn's new children’s book, Maple’s Garden, teaches kids about free expression
Episode Stats
Words per minute
161.79337
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with Canadian author, lawyer, and author of a new kids' book about the need for freedom of expression, Lisa Pritchard, to talk about her new book, Maple's Garden, and why it's so important to teach our kids about the importance of free speech.
Transcript
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I find that quite often this idea of big daddy government taking care of everything, everything
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the government says is fine, and it's in order to be safe, okay?
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That kind of thinking really gets baked in here.
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Like here in Alberta, it's a bit different, but it's really baked in, I found from experience
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of living in places like Ontario and living in places like Nova Scotia, not to generalize,
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I know everybody is different, but just generally speaking as a culture.
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And I think that that does start in the schools, and it starts in kids' books, which is why
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You wrote a kids' book, I think it's called Maple's Garden, and it's all about the fundamental
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Up in the United States, they'd call it free speech, but free expression, free speech.
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Why did you think it was important to help little kids start appreciating a fundamental
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freedom like this? So it is so important that children understand the right to freedom of
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expression at an early age, because it's going to be our children who are the guardians of our
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civil liberties for the next generation. And I, as a civil liberties lawyer, I watch every day
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these freedoms get eroded. And I think the courts are not the bulwark against the government
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overreach that we would like them to be what we need to do is educate our children and create a
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culture where civil liberties is valued and so that's why i wrote this book maple's garden
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beautifully illustrated by a canadian artist who i actually grew up with who has had her own
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issues with with freedom of expression as an artist she drew pictures of the convoy and she
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had other artists attack her and if you can't have free expression as an artist if you can't explore
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controversial as an artist i mean what is even the point of art if you can't do that so i was
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so proud to collaborate with lisa on this project maple's garden it's going to be available uh as of
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september 2nd and it's available for pre-order right now it's available september 2nd yeah that's
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the launch date did you pick atlas shrug day on purpose or was that just a coincidence it's of
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course you know would know that chris no that's a coincidence but yeah i should say it's on purpose