For young Hart, Camp BB made him feel at home. \u201cEven both my parents went to this camp,\u201d he writes. \u201cIt was a tradition in the community. It was a place to just be ourselves \u2026 and that was important because back then, growing up Jewish in Alberta wasn\u2019t always so easy.\u201d<\/p>\n Back then, in Eckville, Alta., the winter before Snider\u2019s first summer at camp, teacher Jim Keegstra, \u201calso the town\u2019s mayor, was fired by the local school board.<\/p>\n \u201cBelieving the curriculum was \u2018incomplete,\u2019 Keegstra had been teaching Holocaust denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories in his classroom \u2013 that Jewish people had an international plot to control the world and were to blame for everything that\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n But one Eckville parent, Susan Maddox, \u201cnoticed her 14-year-old son had some strange new opinions.\u201d She looked through his notebooks, then filed a complaint with the school board.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, more than a thousand people attended a rally at the Edmonton Jewish Community Centre to figure out how to respond to the situation. One of the ideas proposed \u2013 by then Camp BB director Bill Meloff, z\u2019\u2019l \u2013 was to invite some of Keegstra\u2019s former students to the camp for a \u201cday of fun and fellowship,\u201d which included the title\u2019s basketball game.<\/p>\n In a brilliantly drawn sequence, the team players are depicted as their negative stereotypes, how they see one another. Blue Team \u2013 a horned demon, a world-controlling banker and an evil wizard \u2013 versus Red Team \u2013 a skinhead, a Nazi and a member of the KKK. The game is intense. Then, an opposing player compliments Hart\u2019s shot. \u201cThanks, man,\u201d says Hart. The game continues, kids versus kids, no more monsters.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking back, it\u2019s amazing<\/em> that it happened at all,\u201d writes Snider. \u201cThat Keegstra\u2019s students were invited<\/em> to the camp, and they actually came<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the thing. Someone had to extend the invitation, and someone had to accept. An illustrated reproduction of an actual newspaper clipping from 1983 notes that attendance at the camp was voluntary and that a preliminary survey indicated that about 10% of Eckville Junior-Senior High School\u2019s 186 students \u201cwould be willing to attend.\u201d<\/p>\n Here we are, almost 40 years later and, as Snider notes in his introduction: \u201cRacism, conspiracy theories and antisemitism are spread every day on social media and other platforms. The hate that Keegstra taught in his classroom is now found in memes, videos and forums. Over and over again, we are challenged with the question, how do we deal with fear and prejudice?<\/p>\n \u201cI hope we can continue to find common ground and have empathy for each other, but, most importantly, I hope that parents and kids keep talking to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n The book, intended for readers 12 years old and up, includes more on the Keegstra trial, discussion questions and a glossary.<\/p>\n![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/dec-09-books.09.Snider-BasketballGame-cover.jpg\")
<\/a>It was July 1983. The camp was Camp BB Riback in Pine Lake, Alta. Snider was 9 years old and \u201ctotally homesick,\u201d finding refuge in the comic books he had brought with him. That is, until he meets Galit. (The book is dedicated to his \u201cpartner, collaborator, inspiration and best friend, Galit,\u201d his daughter and his parents.)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>