Pink Shirt Day - Proudly Canadian

Did you wear pink April 14 to show your support for stopping bullying? At school, at work, at home, in public. I did! 

Makes ya proud to be a Canadian! 

Here's how the CBC called it September 2007: 

'Two Nova Scotia students are being praised across North America for the way they turned the tide against the bullies who picked on a fellow student for wearing pink.

The victim — a Grade 9 boy at Central Kings Rural High School in the small community of Cambridge — wore a pink polo shirt on his first day of school.

Bullies harassed the boy, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up, students said.

Two Grade 12 students — David Shepherd and Travis Price — heard the news and decided to take action.

"I just figured enough was enough," said Shepherd.

They went to a nearby discount store and bought 50 pink shirts, including tank tops, to wear to school the next day.

.....And there's been nary a peep from the bullies since, which Shepherd says just goes to show what a little activism will do.'

I was wondering why I felt a bit sad, immobilized, withdrawn yesterday. Something deep, painful I couldn't seem to find words for. Then I started thinking about, Bullies, I have known.  Bullying begins at home, bullies, they live somewhere. There was of course the highly abusive father, I'll return to that later. There was an older brother who enlisted my siblings in excluding me from, well, everything, until he left home when I was 14. They complied, even though he broke their bones anyway. He later joined law enforcement, draw your own conclusions. When I was 12, I said something a girl in my class didn't like, she was known for jumping to conclusions and taking things the wrong way. She said she was going to get her boyfriend, a notorious bully, small but mean, to beat me up. At that point my after school playmates were 3 neighborhood boys, so I wasn't as that phased as I might have been. I decided I would rather face up to it, than be ambushed, so I met N, at the set time and place after school by the bike sheds. He explained to me a little whakama (shamed) that if he beat one more person up he was going to be permanently expelled from school. So that was the end of the matter.

There was the sexual harassment my classmates and I endured from some of the few male teachers at an all girls public school. There was mr F who taught French, in a berating manner, and was known for leaning his 6 foot frame over our desks from behind and looking down our uniforms at our breasts. The was the art teacher mr C who was known for taking 'crotch shots' of athletes, allegedly for the school magazine. When you take photos of adolescent girls  in sports attire you need to be very careful how you frame them. At 16 we made up a rhyming song about the students and teachers, while on a school trip. The line about him - which I believe was supplied by a young student teacher - went 'mr C is a dirty old man, you watch out for his wandering hand'. We sang the song at an end of year public event. I was the one who had written the words down, and called out the lines. The Principal  told me we could sing the song if  we took out those lines, resentfully, we did.  But that was not the end of the matter, by 17 I was in his art history class, he frequently made inappropriate sexual comments about nude artworks we were studying. After talking amongst ourselves about it, I spoke to the Dean of our year. She said the school was aware of the problem and there was nothing they could do about it. (This was the 1980's). So we students agreed we would write down what he said. C, who sat at the back agreed to do it, mr C saw her notes and bullied her from the class, I failed art history.

There were other staff who were lovely. Like mr B our beloved science teacher, one day when I was 13 some of my classmates decided to tease me about how I talked, several of them imitated me, I just couldn't take it that day, I thought I was amongst friends. I hid my head, in my folded arms on my desk, and started to cry, I couldn't stop. At the end of class mr B had all the other students leave and then he tried to talk to me. He asked all the right questions, was I sick, was it a relationship, was there trouble at home, was I having difficulty in school. I couldn't speak, or even raise my head. Eventually he let me go and I went to the bathroom to get myself together.

When I was 20, and had extracted myself, or so I hoped from the reach of the abusive father, in a different city. I heard from my professors that he was at the University looking for me. I went, in my bare feet to see the stern Registrar who had a reputation for being a stickler for protocol, to explain my predicament. This was in the days before an awareness or policy about privacy, and the University was in the habit of giving out student's phone numbers and addresses to friends and relatives who asked for them. The Registrar looked at me for only a moment, and then swiftly erased my address and phone number  from the computer database. The relief, and gratitude was immense.

Bullies are not only male, female, too. But women can be less overt sometimes, harder to identity. Like the relative who tells you constantly how useless you are; or the sister who when you are a child pretends to people you are a boy, so you will be excluded from playing with other girls. Or the boss who takes your work and ideas, puts her name on it, giving you no credit.

I've been bullied in my own community, by a friend of a friend who spread outrageous false rumours about me. I called her on it, I asked to meet, with a qualified third party if she wanted, she could choose. She refused. It so angered and hurt my friend, she stopped participating in that community. As fate would have it, years later ms Rumour was in a class I taught, I was teaching people how to - listen. Sometimes I think the universe has  a sense of humour!

I'm a fairly assertive person, but still not immune to bullying. In the past 10 years, bullying bosses - 3 out of 6. Thankfully not currently! It's hard for me to even accept the last time I was bullied at work was only 2 years ago. The first time, he apologized on his own. The second time I called him on it. The third time I had to speak to some one higher up. He had been formally censured at least twice already for bullying other staff members.

Bullying is a behavior - like the in-law I met by chance on a transit platform, who shouted at me for twenty minutes while bemused passengers looked on with shock on their faces, wondering what to do. Nobody did anything. It doesn't have to be a lifestyle. We are all capable of it, it can happen to any of us, we can all be complicit. DON'T. I try to remember, see the good in all people. Mostly I can, it is much harder to imagine in people who terrorized you for years. Do something. I have driven strangers home who were running for their lives, stood up for colleagues at work. Told a young lesbian she does not deserve to be beaten by her parent, stood between abusive young men and their girlfriends to halt an attack. Recently I gave a knee tap with my walking stick to a man who was body slamming his girlfriend on the bus. Quite often this results in the bully, and sometimes the victim turning this in to a homophobic attack on me, but it won't stop me.

In its third official year (fourth counting the original action)  PINK SHIRT DAY is now observed Internationally.

In 2011 PINK SHIRT DAY will return to its usual last Wednesday in February, and be observed February 23 2011. Mark you calendars now! You can keep up to date with plans and events for PINK SHIRT DAY on Facebook.