N.B. school principal received death threats in anthem dispute
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 | 10:11 AM AT
School principal Erik Millett says he was flooded with hostile messages, including taunts and death threats, after his decision to stop the daily singing of the national anthem at Belleisle Elementary School in New Brunswick.
Millett, the school's principal, said in an exclusive interview with CBC News that he was inundated with more than 2,000 emails over the anthem controversy, but some of the negative messages crossed the line and became personal threats.
"I received threats by email, death threats over my phone at home. I had to have my telephone number changed," he said.
Those threats were not relegated simply to the phone and internet. Millett also described how at the height of the anthem debate, he was sitting in his office with a student when a local parent walked in to speak with him.
"He said that I should be ashamed of myself, that I embarrassed the community. He said that if my admin assistant wasn't there he would drag me outside by my shirt collar to the parking lot and beat me senseless," Millett said.
"At that point, I said that our conversation, our meeting was over and I thanked him for coming in and sharing his opinion and I asked him to leave my office. He told me that I would be driven out of the community one way or the other."
The national controversy ignited after it became known that Millett had stopped the daily singing of O Canada at his elementary school in rural New Brunswick. Instead, students would sing the anthem monthly at a school assembly.
Some of New Brunswick's Conservative MPs attacked the move on the floor of the House of Commons as "political correctness run wild." Eventually, the district superintendent ordered that the anthem be returned as a daily practice in the school.
The principal said he is now seeing a psychologist as he attempts to overcome the backlash over the anthem dispute.
"It's pretty traumatic. I just hope that no teacher, no administrator has to go through something like that again," he said.
Principal didn't want to separate students
Millett has said that two parents objected to the anthem ritual on religious grounds, and that he and his staff took the necessary steps to foster an inclusive school.
Those measures, he said, are supported by human rights legislation and the Education Act.
He also bristled at the idea that students who did not want to be a part of the anthem's singing should step outside.
"Asking a student to leave the classroom every day at the primary level, I think that is unacceptable. That is not the kind of environment I want to create in a school where I'm at," he said.
"If I was a student I would not want to begin my day every day to leave the classroom and be separated from my peers."
But Millett said he was open to making accommodations for students who felt strongly about the anthem. He said he allowed Julia Boyd, whose mother Susan has led the charge to reinstate the daily song, to sing O Canada at the monthly school assemblies.
Parent asks: 'What about the majority?'
Susan Boyd, whose soldier nephew was killed in Afghanistan, said national symbols must stop being removed from the classroom.
"The Lord's Prayer is gone. The [Oath] of Allegiance is gone. It has come to the point that we don't want to offend the minority, we don't want to offend people," Boyd said.
"But what about the majority? Because we are at the point now that we are offended because our anthem is disappearing."
The anthem is once again being piped into classrooms at the elementary school over the public address system. And while O Canada has returned, it is not clear if Millett ever will.
"I really don't know when I'll be able to return to work. [I am] personally devastated by this," he said.
"I don't know whether I'll ever return to teaching or a principalship again."
