Defend Expression

To receive the Ken Filkow Prize from PEN Canada—an organization that has long stood at the front lines of the struggle for free expression—is both humbling and a little surreal. I am deeply grateful for this honour, and for the opportunity to reflect on what it means to do this work in a moment when truth itself feels like contested territory.

I come from a culture and a lineage shaped by revolution, rupture, and reinvention. I have seen how language can be weaponized, how silence can be coerced, and how stories are erased or rewritten to suit the needs of power. And I have also seen, time and again, how ordinary people insist on speaking anyway. How a single sentence, whispered or smuggled or shouted, can become an act of defiance.

So when I think about journalism, I think about that insistence—about the refusal to relinquish one’s voice even in the face of intimidation or exhaustion. Journalism, at its best, is simply that refusal made public. I think about the more than 200 Palestinian media workers and journalists killed by Israel over the duration of its genocide in Gaza. An abhorrent crime that Israel must be held to account for but that has been more often than not ignored by the very Canadian institutions that are meant to advocate on their behalf.

But none of us does this work alone. The freedom to speak requires the freedom to listen, and the freedom to be heard. In an era of disinformation, polarization, and algorithmic distortion, listening itself has become an endangered practice. The challenge is not merely to tell the truth but to build the conditions where the truth can land—and where facts can breathe.

The people who trust me with their stories—refugees, survivors, dissenters, families navigating grief or injustice—they remind me every day that storytelling is a sacred responsibility. These are not just narratives; they are lives shaped by forces that would prefer they remain invisible. And so the work of journalism is, in part, an act of restoration —restoring dignity, restoring context, restoring the complexity that so often gets stripped away.

PEN Canada’s commitment to defending writers and journalists has never been more essential. The threats we face today are diffuse: legal intimidation, online harassment, state surveillance, corporate pressure, and the slow, grinding erosion of trust. These forces do not merely challenge journalism; they corrode the democratic fabric that allows journalism to exist in the first place.

So this award is not simply a recognition—it is a charge. A reminder that our responsibility is ongoing. To continue asking difficult questions, especially when the answers are inconvenient. To speak with precision and with empathy. To provide a microphone for voices that have been sidelined or dismissed. And to resist, in every way we can, the normalization of fear.

To my colleagues, mentors, collaborators, and the communities whose stories I have had the honour of helping to tell: thank you for your courage and your generosity. To my family and my partner Heidi who are here tonight — I know it hasn’t been easy but I know you wouldn’t have me any other way.

And to PEN Canada: your advocacy makes our work possible. You stand as a reminder that freedom of expression is not a luxury granted from above but a right defended from below, again and again.

I accept this prize with gratitude, with humility, and with the fierce hope that our words will continue to illuminate even the darkest corners. May we all keep speaking—and listening—with intention, with integrity, and with the belief that truth, however contested, is still worth fighting for.

Photo by Joseph Michael Photography / josephmichael.ca