A school trustee candidate, who is running for one of five spots in Kamloops, said she wants to ban certain books from school libraries and share content on Facebook alleging that Satan invented all genders except male and female.
Jennifer Rowse, 35, lives in Tobiano and is running for public office in Kamloops as a school trustee. She moved to the area from Abbotsford last year and her two children attend the town’s public primary school.
Rowse was supported by Take Action Kamloops, an anonymous group of anti-vaccination-requirement people who previously hosted “mask-free montages” at the Real Canadian Superstore, during which they defied public health orders by refusing to shop to put on masks.
In an email to supporters, Take Action Kamloops called the SD73 education agency “public enemy number one” and described Rowse as “a woman who refused to stand idly by and watch them mask their children, their children taunted, she didn’t, and won’t, do not represent the perverse sexual debauchery that the education system has become.”
Rowse initially agreed to be interviewed by Kamloop’s This Week and later declined, citing a distrust of the media, but included some information about her views in emails to the paper.
The trustee nominee provided a list of 10 books currently available in District 73 schools that she would like to see banned, including All Boys Aren’t Blue, It’s Perfectly Normal and The Hate U Give.
Rowse also criticized the sex education taught in SD73 schools, calling it and the available books on sex and gender “sexual indoctrination”.
Another campaign point addressed by Rowse in an email to KTW is transparency.
“Full transparency shows respect for all parents. Honesty and transparency breeds trust and to be honest I have a healthy distrust of government due to a lack of transparency. This is a huge topic and I can chatter about it forever,” Rowse said in her email, while twice declining KTW’s invitation for an interview.
Rowse rejects SOGI 123, a curriculum component that teaches that everyone has a sexual orientation and gender identity as part of sex education in British Columbia schools. SOGI (Sexual Identification and Gender Identity) was passed six years ago.
KTW had planned to ask Rowse about her views, including whether she is anti-gay or anti-vaccination, as many of her own Facebook posts and shared posts suggest.
A post shared by Rowse on October 3, 2021 reads: “God created man and woman. Satan invented all other sexes.”
Although her Facebook page has since been privatized, KTW archived the page’s content after initial reports of the candidate’s views. The page featured many removed posts and several others reported by Facebook due to misinformation. A Twitter account with her first and last name was also suspended.
In a Facebook post on Oct. 4, 2021, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rowse suggested creating separate schools — for masked/vaccinated students and for unmasked/unvaccinated students.
“Listen to me… two schools… one for the Masked/Voxxten and one for the Unmasked/Unvaxxten. The ‘government’ pays for both with our tax money,” she wrote.
In response to another Facebook user who asked if her idea was similar to concentration camps, Rowse said, “I see what you mean by concentration camps… but as it is now, one side isn’t just trying to make theirs too force belief in their own families, but they are now telling us we must believe what they are doing.”
Rowse also published content from American right-wing political action group Turning Point USA and from David Icke, a prominent British conspiracy theorist who has been labeled by critics as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, and someone who popularized the theory that 5G cell towers cause COVID -19
In emails to KTW, Rowse said she and her entire family were vaccinated “except for one” and, contrary to other media reports, denied being labeled as anti-vaccination.
Rowse appears to have been influenced by American politics in other ways too, including another piece of content she shared in September 2021 in which she called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “true-douche” and claimed the country’s choice, which just happened was “another shitty election sponsored by the communist left-wing George Soros Depps.”
Soros, a notable Hungarian-American billionaire and Holocaust survivor, is often the focus of right-wing conspiracy theories.
Rowse is one of 10 candidates running for the Kamloops school administrator. Five trustees are elected in the city.
