A river of pink-clad W. L. McLeod Elementary students flowed through Vanderhoof’s downtown for the third year in a row to speak out against bullying.
Feb. 22 marks 2017’s Pink Shirt Day, when Canadians across the country are urged to wear pink in support of the annual anti-bullying campaign.
Accompanying this year’s awareness-raising walk en masse is a 13-minute Mannequin Challenge video joint-created by each class and depicting students frozen in action during various scenes of school life, including the school bus, hallways, playground, as well as the outdoor classroom.
Classes developed their ideas for each scene after a drama lesson from the school’s principal Libby Hart.
The video was a way for the entire school to participate in advance — last year’s event included an inter-school flash mob in downtown Vanderhoof — as some students were scheduled for cross-country skiing lessons on Feb. 22.
“They did a good job in showing different parts of school,” Hart said.
The finished product, filmed within three weeks before the event, was screened to the entire school, RCMP members, as well as Vanderhoof’s mayor Gerry Thiessen and councillor Kevin Moutray, before the walk.
“Today is a great reminder in how we treat others in our lives for not just today, but every day of the year,” Thiessen said.
Pink Shirt Day originated in 2007 when a Grade 9 student in Nova Scotia was bullied for wearing a pink polo shirt on the first day of school.
When two Grade 12 students heard about the incident, they bought 50 discount pink shirts for distribution to all boys to wear on the next day.
Though only their classmates were emailed that night, hundreds of other students wore their pink clothes in support, sparking a movement across the country.
In 2008, former premier Gordon Campbell declared Feb. 27 as the provincial anti-bullying day.