Human-rights education bus makes first Alberta stop, visits Calgary-area schools

In a specially modified tour bus that acts as an accessible mobile classroom, Calgary-area high school students learned about human rights and the history of Canada on Wednesday.

Put on by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (FSWC), The Canadian Experience covers residential schools, the MS St. Louis that carried Jewish women and children fleeing the Nazis in 1939 and the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.

The sessions go on to discuss cyberbullying, hate crimes and intolerance.

"We can see mistakes that were made in the past, that we can hopefully change our present condition and going forward in the future," said Simon Busse, an educator with the FSWC.

"Whether it's in the Holocaust or in Canada's human-rights history, hatred and discrimination and intolerance are things that continue on to this day."

The bus is part of the FSWC Tour for Humanity program, which educates on the Holocaust, genocide and Canadian human-rights history.

The program started in 2013, touring 1,200 schools from Saskatchewan to the Maritimes, but is only now making its first stops in Alberta and B.C.