Teacher trumps far-right rivals

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This article was published 06/06/2024 (475 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A school teacher has claimed a trustee seat in the Louis Riel School Division left vacant by a disgraced board member who resigned late last year after multiple suspensions.

Ian Walker, a grades one and two teacher in the River East Transcona School Division, will replace former Ward 1 trustee Francine Champagne, who quit in November after being suspended three times for racist and anti-LGBTTQ+ social media posts.

“It feels amazing, I had a really positive campaign and I’m excited to get to work,” Walker said late Thursday evening of the win.

Polling results show Walker bested runner-up Sandra Saint-Cyr with 64 per cent of the vote in the division’s ward, which encompasses St. Boniface and Windsor Park.

Saint-Cyr garnered just 17 per cent of the vote, followed by Jacqueline Cassel-Cramer with eight per cent, Marcel Boille with six per cent and Bob Lawrie with three per cent.

Two candidates on the ballot — Boille and Saint-Cyr — campaigned on the right-wing “parental rights” movement’s rhetoric, which drew concerns from board members and challengers.

Boille was issued a no-trespass order by LRSD after he and more than 30 others disrupted a board meeting last June to protest Champagne’s suspension for sharing transphobic content on social media.

Boille has previously said he did not want LGBTTQ+, gender identity or sexual education to be part of children’s learning in schools.

Walker said the rhetoric coming from his competitors motivated him throughout the eight-week campaign.

“I was out every single night … knocking on doors and meeting people to ensure that (people like that) didn’t get back into power,” he said.

The trustee-elect’s focuses for the remainder of the year, and proceeding two years until the next general election, will be class sizes, student mental health and student outcomes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Walker added one of his first orders of business will be to sign the code of conduct, which Champagne refused to do.

Board chair Sandy Nemeth (Ward 3) welcomes Walker to the board, but worries what the polling results show.

Out of 2,412 votes cast, 583 went to Boille and Saint-Cyr, compared to Walker’s 1554 votes.

“The fact that there were in excess of 500 people that indicated they (supported) some thoughts and ideas that were harmful is concerning … certainly we have work to do in that regard,” she said.

Walker’s first meeting as a trustee will be June 18, the last board meeting for the academic year.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca