Shakedown book tour -- day one report

What an encouraging day on the book tour! I'm pretty pooped -- we started out quite early to get up to the CTV studios north of the city to do Canada AM, and I was still on Calgary time. (That's my excuse for saying that human rights commissions "squish and squash" our civil liberties, when the word I probably meant was "quash"!)

In an amazing coincidence, as I waited in CTV's green room before my segment, the CTV guest who was scheduled to appear on the show right before me and was also waiting in the room introduced himself to me as a reader of my blog and a supporter of my legal defence fund! I recognized his name, and we chatted until he had to go on the show, and I signed a copy of the book for him right there. It was such a serendipitous way to start the book tour -- a reminder of how many thousands of people across the country are rooting for free speech. It put a spring in my step for the rest of the day.

You can see a video clip of my Canada AM appearance here (and here when it's archived). And later in the day I appeared on the Business News Network. They gave me a generous seven minutes of airtime, and we really dug into the subject matter. You can see that clip here.

Tomorrow is a busy day, too; I start off with Toronto's John Oakley show at 9:30 a.m. ET. John is a strong supporter of free speech -- it will be great to actually be in studio with him, instead of on the phone as I usual am. And then I'm off to Burlington to tape the full hour of Michael Coren's TV show -- I can hardly wait. You can see the local times for that show here. I cap off the day with my hometown favourite, Rob Breakenridge of Calgary's The World Tonight, who has probably given more attention to the free speech issue than any other radio host in the country. That's at 7 p.m. MT.

Wednesday and Thursday I have a full slate of events in Ottawa, including a tag-team dinner speech with Nigel Hannaford of the Calgary Herald. According to this web page, it looks like tickets are still available.

When I've got a few more moments, I'll post details about my public events coming up in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Victoria, Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton, Saskatoon, London (Ont.) -- and even a few international cities, a reminder that the whole world is watching the spectacle of Canada's abusive human rights commissions, and how we protect our heritage of freedom is a subject of concern for our friends around the world.

Tune in tomorrow to the radio and TV if you can -- and follow me on Twitter, where I'll be posting mini-updates throughout the day.