B.C. Provincial Education Minister Shirley Bond says her ministry is justified in spending $55,000 for stickers to cover up a contentious Air India reference made in a 2008 calendar handed out to students last year.
Thousands of the history-focused calendars -- called British Columbia: 150 Years -- were handed out to high school kids in December 2007.
Administrators chose to update the calendars after receiving a number of complaints about a reference to the 1985 Air India bombings, which killed 329 people, mostly Canadian.
The entry for October 27 notes the arrest of two men in the Air India bombing, but fails to mention both were acquitted of any crime.
The new stickers that will be sent to schools will include the acquittal verdict.
Inderjit Singh Reyat was the only person ever convicted in the bombing. Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003.
Bond says the historical foundation calendar was not created by education ministry officials -- but it was distributed by them and now the province has the responsibility to ensure students have complete, correct information.
The ministry is asking teachers to direct students to stick the correction stickers on the incorrect calendar entry, or mail the stickers to students who have already graduated.
She says the $55,000 money for stickers to cover the incorrect calendar entry will come from her ministry's administrative budget not from the collective pool of funding shared by all school boards.
With a report from The Canadian Press
