A look inside Ottawa’s extremely strange book festival

In today’s The Big Story podcast, on the surface, it was just another writer’s festival, with perhaps some local food vendors. But as soon as the Ottawa International Food and Book Expo got underway, it became clear something about this one was a little bit off.

Luke LeBrun is the editor of Press Progress. “[Community Solidarity Ottawa] did a lot of the original research into this festival and highlighting some of the far-right connections, but when I started looking into it, it just got weirder and weirder and weirder,” says LeBrun.

Some sponsors either removed themselves or claimed they’d never been associated with the festival in the first place. So what exactly happened in the nation’s capital on the last weekend of April?

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