Woman ordered to remove social media posts about principal

A judge has ordered a woman to delete social media comments that insinuated the principal of a southern Manitoba high school had promoted the distribution of child pornography.

Carman Collegiate principal Mary Reimer is suing Raelyn Fox, who had a child enrolled at the school in 2023, over “online defamatory statements” made on Facebook.

The comments were made during conversations around banning certain books from the school’s library.

Fox, who has nearly 10,000 followers on Facebook, was one of a number of parents who petitioned the Prairie Rose School Division in 2023 to pull books described as having depictions of sexual acts and sexual violence.

The titles included the non-fiction work This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson, Milk and Honey, a book of poetry by Rupi Kaur, and Alice Sebold’s Lucky.

Reimer said Fox went beyond statements about books and made defamatory claims about her several times between July 2023 and September 2024.

Those comments include claims that Reimer “believes porn should be available to your child whether you find it offensive or not,” and implies school staff are “backing the grooming of our children.”

The principal said two of the three books were not even in the school’s library, and the third — This Book is Gay — was restricted to an area for older students.

Reimer sought an injunction as part of her claim, originally filed in October, that would forbid Fox from publishing “defamatory or injurious” statements about her online. That injunction was granted in court Thursday.

“(Reimer) has been severely injured in terms of her character and reputation,” the principal’s statement of claim reads. “She has suffered damages to her reputation personally, and in the way of her office, profession, calling, trade and business.”

Fox was ordered to delete three posts she made online, and three posts others made on a page she moderates.

“I would have liked to see the judge take more time to assess the entirety of the situation, but this doesn’t change my commitment to protecting children,” Fox said after the ruling.

A date has not been set for the trial.

A wave of clashes over book banning hit school divisions across Manitoba in 2023.

More recently, the Pembina Trails School Division in Winnipeg contacted Action4Canada, a radical conservative group, to ask they remain off school premises.

Members of the group, which advocates for “family, faith and freedom,” handed out brochures and approached parents on school properties to warn them of what they described as “pornographic” content in schools.

According to the Canadian Library Challenges Database, which is operated by the Centre for Free Expression in Toronto, there have been 14 requests to remove books at Manitoba schools in 2025. All of those requests were denied.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

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