Awareness
In September of 2007, at Central Kings Rural High School in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, a 9th grader wore a pink shirt to his first day of school.
If you’ve been taught in Canada’s public education system in the years since, you likely know the basics of the story that followed. The student was threatened and bullied for his colourful apparel—a cruelty that wasn’t anything particularly remarkable in the culture of the time. This time, however, two bystanders decided to act.
David Shepherd, Travis Price, and a few of their friends stood up for the student against his bullies, but they didn’t stop there. Mr. Shepherd and Mr. Price met with staff at their school the same week and swiftly began to gather support from other students through MSN Messenger and a little site called Facebook. They purchased dozens of pink t-shirts, and when they began to hand them out on a Friday morning, they ran out in minutes.
When the student who had been bullied walked into school one day, over one hundred students were wearing pink in solidarity with him. Mr. Price would recall that “It looked like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.”
The bullies saw it too, a concrete display of intolerance and disagreement with their actions. The gesture changed the culture at Central Kings, showing students that they weren’t alone. “Kids aren’t as intimidated to come to school,” said Mr. Price, who would fake being sick when he was younger to stay away from his own bullies. “We haven’t put a stop to it, but we put a dent in it. We said it’s okay to stand up.”
The story might have ended there, with a heartwarming display of compassion that made a remarkable difference in a school’s culture. Of course, things didn’t stay confined to the Annapolis Valley. First, dozens of Halifax schools followed in Mr. Shepherd and Mr. Price’s footsteps. Soon after, then-Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald wore a pink tie and wrote with a pink pen when he declared that the second Thursday of the school year would be thus known as Stand Up to Bullying Day. The Globe and Mail then ran an article about the heartwarming events at Central Kings Rural High School, and things truly took off from there.
Since 2007, Stand Up to Bullying Day has become nationally recognised as Pink Shirt Day, and has spread across the world. It’s been recognised by the UN and is practiced in around 25 countries. In 2022, donations poured in from 180 countries. A particularly large movement takes place in New Zealand, where they commemorate the day on the third Friday of May and have done so since 2009.
Despite the strides taken to raise awareness and make real change, bullying is still a massive issue across Canada, and society as a whole. According to Public Safety Canada, 47% of parents have at least one child who has experienced bullying. The RCMP further states that 31% of Canada’s youth have been cyberbullied—which is a form of bullying that can be extra pervasive and is a growing concern. We must also never assume bullying is a problem only restricted to our youth: 40% of adults reported experiencing bullying at their places of work. Pink Shirt Day has been around for close to two decades now, and it is still every bit as necessary as it was in 2007.
Toxic masculinity still pervades through our culture today. It’s important to note, though, that it wasn’t just the ideas on ‘manly’ colours that fuelled the initial incident at Central Kings Rural High School. With the knowledge we have today, it might seem obvious that homophobic bigotry, and the idea of pink as a ‘gay’ colour, played a role, but even back in the distant times of the 2000s many people acknowledged this factor played a key role in what happened back then. This includes the principal and faculty advisor for the Rainbow Club at Malvern Collegiate Institute in Toronto. The University of Toronto likewise acknowledges that Pink Shirt Day “is an opportunity to address bullying motivated by homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia,” and has expanded into “a broader call for the elimination of all forms of bullying, discrimination, and harassment,”
This Pink Shirt Day—and all that are to come—it’s important to recognize all the forms that bullying can take, including that which is at its core motivated by bigotry of any form.
If you would like to support Pink Shirt Day, I’d encourage you to visit the websites of the WITS Program Foundation or the CKNW Kids Fund. Pink Shirt Day reminds us that one small act of kindness can quite literally change a person’s life, and even change the whole world. It reminds us that together, we can create a future where no one has to feel alone, and we can all wear pink—or any other colour in the rainbow—proudly.
Written by: Holly Mitchell
