Letter from Tamara Bernstein to the Canada Council re Funding of Ex-Puritan's Oct. 7 Praise

Ms. Johnson,

I am writing to add my voice to the widespread disgust over the current, special issue of an online publication funded by the Canada Council for the Arts — the (weirdly named) Ex-Puritan. The guest editor’s grotesque praise for the depraved, sadistic, psychopathic assaults of Hamas and the assorted genocidal jihadis who joined its ranks on Oct. 7, as outlined in Marsha Lederman’s article in today’s Globe and Mail, calls for an immediate and forceful response from your office.

I would expect the Council to immediately cancel the Ex-Puritan’s four-year operating grant (and any project grants it may also hold), and demand immediate repayment of whatever 2026 funding went into the current issue. I also urge the Council to make the resignation of the journal’s entire editorial board a precondition of any future applications for Canada Council funding. I also urge the Council to ask its legal counsel whether the Canada Council can file an injunction for the permanent removal of Ms. Orang’s poem from the journal’s website. If other organizations have already initiated such an application, the Canada Council should join in the application.

Finally, the Council should sue the Ex-Puritan for all legal costs incurred by the Council in dealing with this matter. Canada’s taxpayers should not have to pay twice to mop up this literary excrement.

I look forward to hearing from you regarding the Council’s response to this abuse of its support.

Respectfully,

Tamara Bernstein, Montreal and Toronto