Last July, I told Quillette readers about Richard Bilkszto, a veteran Toronto public-school principal who was denounced and humiliated in front of co-workers by an “anti-racist” training consultant named Kike Ojo-Thompson. An Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) investigation subsequently concluded that Ojo-Thompson’s behaviour had been “abusive, egregious and vexatious, and [rose] to the level of workplace harassment and bullying.”

I came to know Richard in the aftermath of that April 2021 episode. He was a sensitive and politically progressive gay man who’d devoted his life to public education. As a recording of his Zoom interactions with Ojo-Thompson showed, he’d done nothing more than politely ask a good-faith question that challenged her hyperbolic claims about the supposedly white supremacist nature of Canadian society. I was glad to see Richard vindicated, both at the WSIB and in the larger court of Canadian public opinion.

His story ended tragically, however: Last July, he committed suicide, having never fully recovered psychologically from the experience of being falsely denounced as a racist in front of his peers. A statement released by his family members indicated their belief that he’d ended his life due to the distress caused by Ojo-Thompson (who still holds herself out as “an anti-racism and anti-Black racism educator, speaker, and organizational change facilitator”). For many Canadians, the grim episode has come to symbolize the cruel and hectoring tendencies that suffuse many anti-racism struggle sessions.