According to a new Angus Reid poll, three out of four adults in Canada say they were bullied when they were younger, but some local students are hoping to change those statistics.
The students at Maple Grove Public School in Barrie are standing up against bullying by celebrating Pink Day on Wednesday. Several students dressed in pink to show their support, Andrew, a grade eight student, was one of them.
“It’s something that affects everybody regardless if you've been bullied yourself, you've been a bystander or had a friend or family member that's been bullied and it's important that we stop it,” he says.
The emotional scars of bullying can last a lifetime. Even the principal, Ian Strath remembers the kids who bullied him when he was a student.
“I can describe them to you so it must be very fresh. They don't go away the things that hurt,” says Strath. “If we can celebrate the differences rather than poke holes in them and make fun of them, we're stronger together.”
National Anti-Bullying Day, otherwise known as Pink Shirt Day was started in 2007 by students in Nova Scotia who witnessed a boy being bullied for wearing a pink shirt.
