'You don't have to suffer in silence': Surrey teacher confronts online harassment

Annie Ohana's classroom is decorated with colourful and thought-provoking posters and flags. They're part of Ohana's curriculum at L.A. Matheson Secondary in Surrey, B.C., and meant to ignite dialogue amongst her students.

Annie Ohana’s classroom is decorated with colourful and thought-provoking posters and flags. They’re part of Ohana’s curriculum at L.A. Matheson Secondary in Surrey, B.C., and meant to ignite dialogue amongst her students.

“We’ve had students tell us that those flags really mean something to them,” she said. “It represents them.”

While the flags and posters are embraced at the school, they’re also the reason Ohana was targeted online by Chanel Pfahl, a former high school teacher who – according to her bio on X, formerly known as Twitter – exposes “wokism” in Canadian schools.

Pfahl posted a photo on the platform criticizing Ohana’s classroom, saying the educator is “influencing kids to adopt her personal political beliefs” and that she needs to be fired immediately.

“She seems to be making a lot of assumptions that were simply based on misinformation, lies, and in fact, puts myself and other teachers and students and my community in danger,” Ohana said.

When asked for comment, Pfahl said in a direct message on X, “Any reasonable person who looks through (Ohana’s) thousands of posts on X will see that she is indoctrinating kids with radical woke ideology.”

Ohana said the curriculum and class outline she provides as the Indigenous Department head undergo an approval process by the Surrey School District, and that she and her colleagues are not indoctrinating any students.