The Death of a former Toronto District School Board Principal sparks controversy

BY PAUL JUNOR

The suicide death of Richard Bilkszto, a former Toronto District School Board Principal came as a shock to those who worked with him. He was a retired principal who worked primarily in adult education schools for 24 years until his retirement in 2019. His most recent principal duties were at Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute BCI located in South-West Toronto.

He sued the TDSB after attending an anti-racism training conducted by KOJO Institute, which is run by principal consultant Kike-Ojo-Thompson. Kike has worked with many diverse public and private organizations across North America for over 20 years and enabled them to identify inequities and create meaningful change. Kike’s understanding of what equity is and what it looks like is only step one. That understanding has to be followed by strategic action. There can be no meaningful change without the frameworks and processes that created the conditions needed for equity to exist.

Ojo-Thompson presented two anti-Black racism-training sessions on April 26^th, and May 3^rd, 2021. During the course of the presentation, she allegedly mentioned that Canada has a greater degree of racism, because of its failure to acknowledge the reality of anti-Black history here compared to America. Bilkszko disagreed with her position and voiced objections. Details about what happens afterward have not been clearly reported.

Bilkszko subsequently sued the TDSB claiming that his reputation was “Systematically demolished” after these anti-racism training sessions when he “Challenged some of the speaker’s comments because he was singled out and accused of supporting White supremacy.” The impact of this led to him experiencing severe emotional distress resulting in him taking a medical leave for stress and filing a Workplace Safety and Insurance Board claim. In response to this, the WSIB adjudicator agreed with Bilkszko that Ojo-Thompson was “Abusive, egregious and vexatious, and her behaviour rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying.”

In a statement by KOJO Institute, it offers condolences and disputed Bilkszto’s allegations indicating that the lawsuit is “An inaccurate and incomplete picture” of what really transpired at the equity training sessions.

Details have been revealed about the 10-minute interaction between Bilkszto and Ojo-Thompson during the training sessions and a follow-up to that interaction.

Apparently, she never claimed that, “Canada is more racist than the United States” and never described Bilkszto as a “White supremacist and resistor.”  Reports have revealed for the first time a fuller picture of the conversations and disagreement that has been cherry-picked, shorn-off contexts and nuance, and presented by those with an agenda to villainize diversity initiatives.

The question here is have media outlets exploited the story to create controversy?