Championing a world where every idea is heard.

Thank you for signing up for EPL’s new Intellectual Freedom newsletter. This is a space for our community to come together in support of your right to explore any topic, belief, or idea, without censorship.

As book bans and access restrictions increase across the world and in our own backyard, public libraries play an essential role in supporting access to information and the freedom to think. Over time, we’ll leverage this newsletter to share events, book lists, learning resources, and updates information on issues affecting intellectual freedom in our community.

This newsletter is not a one-way conversation, and we want to hear from you! Tell us what you’re reading, what concerns you, what excites you, and what questions you have. Reach out anytime with ideas, suggestions, or ways you’d like to get involved at if@epl.ca.

Thank you for joining our movement. We’re glad you’re here.

Pilar Martinez

After many of you asked about the Read Freely shirts our EPL staff wore at the Saturday, Dec. 13 Margaret Atwood event, we’re excited to announce they are now available for purchase.

Every shirt supports intellectual freedom, and $10 from each sale goes directly to EPL programs that make a real difference in our community.

Presale ends Monday, Feb. 2, so order yours while you can! 

Randy Boyagoda is a novelist and professor of English and the University of Toronto’s Advisor on Civil Discourse, the first such position in Canada. In this talk, he will explore the state of civil discourse in our personal, professional, and shared public lives, and the stakes of getting it right. Civil discourse advances knowledge, serves the common good, and aids in the pursuit of truth and Intellectual Freedom. But it only works if people are willing to trust each other, be curious about other viewpoints, admit they might be wrong about something, and want to learn more. This is thinking out loud together, this is civil discourse in action. Tickets are now available for this first Forward Thinking Speaker Series event of 2026.

Discover the bold and sometimes controversial novels that pushed boundaries, sparking conversations with horror, honesty, and social insight.

Freedom to Read Week is right around the corner and raises awareness about intellectual freedom, censorship and book challenges. Visit epl.ca/intellectual-freedom in the coming weeks for details on upcoming programs, including a screening of the documentary “The Librarians” in partnership with Metro Cinema.

• Alberta school divisions say that dozens of school library books have been removed from the shelves as the province’s ban on sexually explicit material took effect at the start of 2026.
• CBC’s Daybreak Alberta asked listeners to share the books that changed the direction of their life when they were young.
• In South Carolina, the York County Public Library Board of Trustees has approved an amendment to their collection policy around the potential exclusion of “books addressing topics on gender identity or other mature themes” from the juvenile collection.  
• The state of Utah has been active last year in banning a list of titles from public schools, and the list continues to grow with three new titles banned already this month.  
• The American Library Association (ALA) announced good news in December, that the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has reinstated its grant funding for libraries across the US due to the successful court challenge by 21 states in response to President Trump’s move earlier in the year to cut IMLS funding via Executive Order.  
• A group of high school students in Georgia noticed that eight titles were quietly removed from a list of book finalists in a young readers award contest due to concerns the books centered on the queer and/or BIPOC voices, told stories of sexual assault, as well as a book that was even about the impacts of book bans. The students appealed successfully to the contest’s steering committee and the books were reinstated.