We’re announcing a small update to the newly released monograph CANADIAN MOCKINGBIRD: Exposing Censorship and Textbook-Mediated Social Engineering. The back cover has been simplified. This ‘less is more’ adaptation shrank my biography. For all intents and purposes, I’m just another librarian performing some librarian-type pursuit. What’s critical is the story and I don’t want to distract from what is being presented.

This is a significant story for Canadians of Baby Boomer or Generation X age who attended either public, Catholic or residential school. All three systems were using Ontario’s textbook catalogue Circular 14. In the past, I haven’t explained clearly that residential school teachers and administrators also used the Circular 14 catalogue, as did other provinces across the country. The catalogue dates to 1846, before Canada’s Confederation. Following 1960 Circular 14‘s annual design became even more a work in psychological manipulation.

The biggest suggestion of CANADIAN MOCKINGBIRD‘s relevance came from an Archives’ employee who, when we last met, asked in stressed and curious tones how the the files had been found. As explained in my first monograph on censorship, NO SCHOOL FOR SUCKERS, the find was a chance nighttime discovery searching the Archives’ database. Individuals interested in history can’t find that altogether strange.

Government encouraged publishers to submit their titles for evaluation by paid subject specialists, with the implication that panel recommendation meant acceptance. No, recommended books that government, for political reasons, didn’t want circulating were covertly censored, in conflict with Canadian and International legal protections. Rejection letters masked the official deception.

Learning of what really happened and what was lost to politics attracted me to the restricted-access evaluations at the Archives of Ontario and corresponding publisher communications at the William Ready Division of Archives at McMaster University. Other researchers investigating these files will be able to discover this story and its evidence for themselves. Whether they’re willing to discuss the subject is an important additional question. It is estimated hundreds of authors were treated similarly. Not all records survive. CANADIAN MOCKINGBIRD shares over seventy censored titles.

Because no in-person release event has occurred yet for the new book, few buyers are impacted. The monograph contents remain unchanged. Watch for an announcement about the upcoming event.

updated Oct. 4, 2024

Jeremy Tompkins’  Canadian Mockingbird: Exposing Censorship and Textbook-Mediated Social Engineering, the 223-page nonfiction book describing a program of covert public and Catholic, and residential school textbook censorship during Baby Boomer and Generation X eras is now available. The program regularly ignored the panel consensus of paid subject specialists, defying domestic and international protections.