PressProgress’ Reporting on Bizarre Far-Right Book Festival Named Finalist for 2025 Investigative Journalism Award
PressProgress has been shortlisted for ‘best investigative article' at the 2025 COPA awards
PressProgress’ investigation into a strange book festival in Ottawa and its ties to the far-right has been shortlisted for an investigative journalism award by the Canadian Online Publishing Awards.
PressProgress Editor Luke LeBrun has been nominated for ‘Best Investigative Article’ for a pair of articles in April 2024 looking into the “Ottawa International Food and Book Expo,” a book festival with speakers linked to the Freedom Convoy, as well as misleading sponsors and fake event organizers.
NEW: An Ottawa book festival platforming far-right speakers is using fake employees and misleading sponsors.
The Embassy of Mexico has pulled out of the event and organizations listed as sponsors want their logos taken off the festival’s websitehttps://t.co/Rp6WZTd9m7 #ottnews
— PressProgress (@pressprogress) April 27, 2024
The story outlines how what started as an innocuous book fair was slowly revealed to be affiliated with a bizarre cast of characters including Freedom Convoy figures, anti-lockdown activists, new age spirituality gurus, conspiracy theorists, obscure cults and People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier.
One organization told PressProgress some of the speakers are known for “promoting conspiratorial tropes, alienating Muslims, and making harmful misinformed claims about gender affirming care and 2SLGBTQIA+ people.”
From there, things only “spiralled out of control,” with sponsors withdrawing their affiliation from the event and it being uncovered that the book festival appears to have fake employees on their website.
The story had wide impact, and in a follow-up story, LeBrun spoke to “angry vendors” from the festival who say they were deceived by the festival and lost out on “thousands of dollars.”
Angry vendors say they were deceived by an Ottawa book festival that featured far-right convoy speakers.
Vendors say they lost thousands of dollars at a confusing and chaotic festival where an event with Maxime Bernier spiralled out-of-controlhttps://t.co/pVnbGVacwq #ottnews
— PressProgress (@pressprogress) May 3, 2024
“Our reporting was able to give voice to a number of vendors and other participants who lost significant amounts of money and felt deeply misled by this so-called book festival,” LeBrun told PressProgress. “I’m also glad my reporting prompted the Ottawa Public Library, the Mexican Embassy, former Much Music VJ Bill Welychka and multiple upstate New York PBS affiliates to break ties with the festival.”
“Being shortlisted for this award is also particularly vindicating given the Ottawa Food and Book Expo tried to falsely link my reporting to a conspiracy involving Microsoft Windows creator Bill Gates.”
Ottawa Book Festival/Facebook
PressProgress is a non-profit news organization with a critical focus on investigative journalism that holds the powerful accountable, exposes unsafe and unfair working conditions, and shines a light on hate and bigotry.
Other finalists alongside PressProgress in the same category include The Investigative Journalism Foundation, The Breach, The Discourse Cowichan Valley and The Walrus.
In October, LeBrun also received Canadian Journalists for Free Expression’s 2024 Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism.
The Canadian Online Publishing Awards will announce award winners in February 2025.
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